Bylazora, the last Macedonian Palace

The Paeonians occupied the land north of ancient Macedonia and functioned as a buffer zone with the Dardanians on their northern border. Bylazora, in fact, was situated in a commanding position at the natural pass leading from Dardania into Macedonia. 

Philip V of Macedonia, who ruled from 221 until 179 BC, captured Bylazora in 217 BC. By blocking the Dardanian access road to Macedonia, he freed his country from their repeated menacing raids. Perseus, Philip’s son, who succeeded his father, sent mercenaries to Bylazora to confront the Romans, but he was defeated in 168 BC. He was taken to Rome to be shown in their victory parade, together with the incredible wealth of Macedonia. The rich kingdom became a mere Roman province. 

Although Bylazora was the largest city of Paeonia and was mentioned by Livy and Polybius, its location remained a mystery. It was tentatively identified with (Titov) Veles, but the results were inconclusive. As so often, the city was discovered by accident in 1994. Road works exposed a buried pool-like building close to modern Sveti Nikole in the Republic of Macedonia, some 50 kilometers southeast of Skopje between the Axios and the Strymon Rivers. 

Excavations started in 2008 after the Museum of Sveti Nikole invited the Texas Foundation for Archaeological & Historical Research (TFAHR) to a joint cooperation. 

It was a slow process of searching for clues that started at the top of the hill, the Acropolis. Soon, a section of the northern defensive wall was exposed, followed by the discovery of a ramp leading up to the Propylon. Next, a Stoa with Doric columns was identified and dated to the days of Philip V based on a similar gallery built by Attalus II in Athens. 

A long wall and successive rooms were unearthed, making the archaeologists realize they had found the Palace of Philip V and Perseus, the last two kings of Macedonia. 

The first room they explored had all the characteristics of a kitchen, with a fireplace, much pottery, plates, vessels, and amphorae from the 3^rd-2^nd century BC. The walls were covered with a thick layer of plaster with traces of paint. Followed a room with columns and capitals, which was named Ante-room since it connected to a more important Tholos. For those who visited the Palace of Aegae in Greece, that space is very recognizable. On the other side of this Tholos lies the Entrance Hall, which in turn is connected to the Vestibule. This large room opened onto the Outer Courtyard via a monumental staircase. 

Keeping the layout of the Palace of Aegae in mind, the archaeologists projected the same series of rooms around the Inner Courtyard. The picture seems to fit perfectly. It also matches the Palace of Dimitrias, situated just south of Volos in Greece. The city was built by Demetrios Poliorcetes when he was king of Macedonia, i.e., 294-288 BC. 

Until now, and as opposed to Aegae and Pella, I had no knowledge of the Macedonian Palaces of Bylazora or Dimitrias. The destruction of the Palaces of Aegae and Pella by the Romans is well-documented. Dimitrias, however, was entirely dismantled, and it is assumed that the same happened in Bylazora, although it was never finished. 

Much more pertinent information with clear maps and unique details can be found in this lecture given by Dr. William J. Neidinger of the TFAHR.

[Pictures from TFAHR]

Planetarium of Archimedes?

A fragment from a complex mechanism was discovered by chance near Olbia, Sardinia, and it soon became clear that the dented gear wheel showed similarities with the mechanism of Anticythera. This fragment, however, was made of a brass alloy unknown otherwise at the time. 

[Kircher's reconstruction of the sphere of Archimedes]

Thanks to the detailed writings of Cicero in the 1^st century BC, we know that Archimedes constructed a Planetarium (Orrery). The celestial globe is mentioned by Ovid in the 1^st century BC and by Claudian, a 4^th-century Latin poet associated with the court of Emperor Honorius in Mediolanum (Milan). 

When, in 212 BC, the Romans sacked Syracuse, Consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus brought to Rome a device that was built by the famous mathematician. It represented the motion of the Sun, Moon, and the planets reproduced on a sphere. In short, a modern Planetarium. 

It was Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, who reported the story as he had seen the object personally and knew how to operate it. Cicero was amazed that Archimedes had been able to generate the motion of the individual planets starting from a single rotation. The Planetarium was placed inside a glass sphere. This corresponds to what Archimedes wrote in a now-lost treatise On Sphere-Making detailing the construction of the Planetarium. 

Livy, who died in 17 AD, wrote that before the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, Gallus, an astronomer himself, used the Planetarium to predict a lunar eclipse on the night before the battle. The news was shared with his Roman legionnaires to prevent them from panicking, but the Macedonians freaked out. 

A first reconstruction based on the section of the gear wheel found near Olbia revealed that it counted 55 dents in total. Noteworthy is the shape of the dents, which is not triangular as in the case of the Anticythera mechanism but slightly curved as used in our modern gear wheels. This shape proves to be more efficient and allows a higher precision. In antiquity, these wheels were created manually and the craftsmen had to do without the use of our modern measuring and cutting tools, which emerged only a few centuries ago. 

Marcus Claudius Marcellus, owner of the Planetarium, was sent off to Spain to fight the Iberic Celts in 152 BC. It is reasonable to assume that Marcellus took the Planetarium with him – a sign of his status – and that his ship was wrecked in the region of Olbia, crashing the Planetarium. 

The Planetarium has been dated between the end of the 3^rd century BC and the mid-2^nd century BC. It thus predates the Anticythera mechanism from the 1^st century BC generally ascribed to Archimedes. However, the analog computer may well have been reproduced based on Archimedes’ description.

It must have been one of the marvels from Hellenistic times, many of which still remain to be discovered!

[the section found near Olbia is thoroughly discussed in this YouTube]

What Oxyrhynchus revealed so far

Several years ago I was at the Getty Villa in Malibu to be treated to two theatrical plays from antiquity, one Greek, The Woman from Samos by Menander, and one Roman, Casina by Plautus.

Set at dusk in the Peristyle of the Villa from which the statues had been removed for the occasion, it was a unique surrounding to see an old play in the New World.

Evidently, the Greek play caught my attention, and it was explained that Menander’s The Woman from Samos had only recently been recovered from the Egyptian desert and had never been performed before. 

The Egyptian desert as the finding place was an odd fact that I could not place at the time until, one day, I learned about the papyrus heap of Oxyrhynchus (see: Hellenica Oxyrhynchia by P.J. McKechnie and S.J. Kern and Get involved with Oxyrhynchus). At this dumpsite, many Greek texts that had been lost for centuries eventually surfaced. Large fragments have been salvaged, like works by Sappho and Alcaeus, poems of Pindar, and considerable bits of authors like Euripides and Sophocles. Also recovered were the most complete diagrams from Euclid’s Elements, a life of Euripides by Satyrus the Peripatetic, and an epitome of seven of the 120 books of Livy that are otherwise lost.

But among the pile of papyri, Menander benefited most from the finds at Oxyrhynchus, with fragments of Misoumenos, Dis Exapaton, Epitrepontes, Karchedonios, Dyskolos (The Bad-Tempered Man or The Malcontent) and Kolax. At last, we have enough works to recognize his status in the Greek theater.

Menander was an Athenian tragedian who lived in the 4th century BC. He was born around 342 BC and, who knows, Alexander may have heard of him or even seen one of his plays while he was in Asia. Menander was a prolific and much-imitated writer, whose success was recognized for centuries after his death. The Romans scrambled to collect unknown plays, which they adapted and translated into Latin. Unfortunately, none of Menander’s plays survived until this chance discovery in the Egyptian desert. 

As I was flipping through a pile of papers, the very program from the Getty Villa fell into my hands again – a most gratifying rekindling of memories. It had been an evening, I never forgot.

The popular The Woman from Samos is a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. It is a complicated story, yet played in such a way that it keeps our attention on edge. It was, of course, executed in English translation. 

Papyri, a precious source of information

As far back as the ancient Egyptians (i.e., as far back as 4,000 BC), papyrus was used as writing support for essential documents. Manufacturing papyrus is an art by itself and a very time-consuming operation. The papyrus reed has to be picked upstream of the Nile, where the stems are harvested. After being cleaned, the triangular stems were cut into long strips. These thin strips were then laid out in two layers, one horizontal and one vertical, that were then pressed together and dried to form the ultimate papyrus sheet. Thanks to its natural gum, these sheets could also be laid side by side to produce a roll, which, when inscribed, would become the known scrolls from antiquity. It is mind-blowing to think how much reed had to be turned into papyrus to produce all the literature from antiquity. We cannot even imagine how many people were involved in making papyrus, whose production must have been organized on an industrial scale.

In the dry desert climate of Egypt, such scrolls could safely survive for centuries, as was proven by the thousands of pieces that emerged from the garbage heap at Oxyrhynchus. Elsewhere, documents were primarily preserved by chance. One such find happened, for instance, in Herculaneum, the Italian city buried under a thick layer of volcanic ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

In those days, Herculaneum, just like Pompeii, was a plush resort town where rich people from Rome sought solace from the summer heat. One such Roman was Lucius Calpurnis Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, who built a grand seaside villa lavishly decorated with more than eighty bronze and marble statues of the finest quality. This is the Villa that Paul Getty copied in Malibu, California, to house his collection of antiquities.

Besides the impressive collection of artwork, Piso’s Villa also yielded a library of some 2,000 scrolls, the only one that survived from the classical world. Unfortunately, we cannot read any of these scrolls since they turned into lumps of charcoal, the result of the pyroclastic blast that carbonized the papyrus before the city caught fire and sank into oblivion under the volcanic ashes. When first discovered, these black burnt logs were not recognized as scrolls, and some were hacked into pieces. A later conservator of the Vatican tried in the 18th century to painstakingly unroll them, spending four years on one single scroll, and many chips just broke off. Even in the 1980s, experts from Oxford University could not do much, and the reading was challenging even under changing light or under a microscope. Manipulating the papyri did more damage than good as fragments crumbled to dust. Towards the end of the 1990s, infrared light helped to decipher some of the texts, followed by multi-spectral imaging providing more precise images of the letters and texts. Unrolling the scrolls was the major problem. In 2009, the Institut de France in Paris used Computerized Tomography (CT) scans to read the internal surfaces of the scrolls. The task was tough even with this modern technology since the rolls were tightly wound and creased. The easy sections could be converted into 2D images, but another problem arose when it was discovered that the chemistry of the ink blended with the chemistry of the paper; the main reason is that ancient ink does not contain any metal.

This all means that we may need new technology or procedures to come to our rescue to decipher these scrolls that may contain lost works from known or even unknown antique authors.

The Hellenistic world, which ruled the Mediterranean roughly from 323 to 31 BC, counted several major libraries, the best known and probably the greatest being the Library of Alexandria, founded in 300 BC. It was severely damaged by Julius Caesar’s fire in 48 BC and was finally destroyed at some time between 270 and 275 AD during the attack of Emperor Aurelius. Next in order was the Library of Pergamon, with some 200,000 volumes, which Marc Anthony “generously” gave to his wife, Queen Cleopatra. The Roman Empire created its own libraries in Rome, often apparently located in separate buildings containing Greek and Latin works. We possess a catalog listing all the facilities of Rome from circa 350 AD, in which no less than 29 public libraries are mentioned!

It is clear that since Hellenistic times, many people were literate and could read either or both Greek and Latin texts. What a shame that so much knowledge and such linguistic skills have been lost since then!

In an article published in the BBC News Magazine,  Robert Fowler, Professor of Classics at the University of Bristol, was so kind as to compose a list of the main lost works from antiquity: 

Aeschylus - only 7 of his 80 plays survive

Aristophanes - 11 out of 40 plays survive

Ennius - his epic poem Annales, is almost entirely lost

Euripides - 18 of his 90 plays survive

Livy - three-quarters of his History of Rome is lost

Sappho - most of her nine books of lyric poems are lost

Sophocles - only 7 entire plays survive of the 120 he wrote

But returning to the Villa dei Papyri, we should be aware that the scrolls found so far lay in and around one room, but there are more rooms on the same level that have never been excavated, nor have the lower levels of the house been. Some of the scrolls discovered were packed in tubular boxes (capsae) used to carry them around, which could imply they came from another room or another part of the Villa. There is a theory that this Villa was not only a holiday residence but a mouseion, a place where the owner could show off his collections of works of art and literature.

New and more in-depth excavations in Herculaneum may answer many of the above questions. Still, the Italian authorities are not too keen to allow more digging as the archaeological site is located just underneath the modern town of Ercolano. This is an understandable argument, of course, but let us not forget that Mount Vesuvius is an ever-present menace, the last major eruption occurred in 1944, and the next one may bury the fragile remains of Herculaneum under an even deeper layer of ashes.

[Picture of the Getty Villa is from their site - click here]

Haggling over the silver hoard of Morgantina

The main treasures exhibited at the Museum of Morgantina are, strangely enough, the result of illegal diggings that found their way via clandestine channels to museums in the United States. The Ladies of Morgantina which I discussed earlier were eventually located by experts at the University of Virginia Art Museum. 

Yet, that is not all for through the same channels a 15-piece silver hoard was smuggled from the so-called House of Eupolemos on the site of Morgantina in Sicily to show up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Evidence for the looting goes back to the 1980’s but discussions back and forth with the Italian authorities dragged on for years. Finally in 2006 an agreement was reached between the Metropolitan Museum, the Italian government and the regional government of Sicily to restitute the treasure under condition to return it to New-York Metropolitan this year for a period of four years. Since it was beyond doubt that the vessels came from the site of Morgantina, the treasure arrived back where it belongs in 2010.

Of course, considering the American point of view, the above deal makes some sense. The Met put down nearly three million dollars during the years 1981-1982 for this Hellenistic silver believed to come from Turkey and wants to cash in on the money spent. But then the Sicilians rightfully say that these unique vessels belong to the place where they were found and should be exhibited at the Museo Regionale di Aidone next to the site of Morgantina. Since November last year, difficult negotiations are taking place to keep this hoard of Eupolemos where it is now in exchange for a possible loan of other artifacts to the Metropolitan. The Met is not commenting on this suggestion although they are at least open for further discussions. Diplomatic responses are being expressed but nothing conclusive so far (See this article in The Art Newspaper).

Thanks to a coin found at the House of Eupolemos, the silverware can be dated to 214-212 BC. These were turbulent years when Carthage and Rome fought each other in the Second Punic War over the supremacy of Sicily. According to Livy, Morgantina was attacked in 211 BC and conquered by the Romans, events that coincides with the time the hoard was hidden. An inscription on a lead-tablet reveals the name of Eupolemos, who is either a high-priest, or the owner or keeper of this precious silverware.  It is probable that when the Roman army entered Morgantina, the silver was buried in the basement of Eupolemos’ house. 

The most striking piece may well be an 11 cm-high miniature silver altar weighing as much as 370 grams and decorated with an Ionic dentil and a Doric frieze of metopes and triglyphs; four ox-heads crowned with a gold star hold the surrounding gilded garland. This altar probably was used for offerings at home, but that is not certain. (More details in this interesting article: “Another thing: Recovered loss – altar from the Morgantina Treasure”).

Beside this special altar, we can admire two large oval bowls for mixing wine; three drinking cups with in their bottom a relief of flowers and leaves; a small cup with fishnet motive (looks like a modern football); a pitcher; a kylix (wide drinking cup with two handles); a phiale (offering-dish) with sunrays; a ladle; two pyxides (round box) one showing a cupid carrying a torch on its lid and the other a lady holding a child on her lap; a magnificent medallion with a picture of Scylla; and two slender horns that probably were part of a leather priest-mask. Several of these objects have inscriptions with dedications to the gods, leading to believe that they were used for libations. 

A closer examination of this silverware has revealed that the vessels were made by artists from Syracuse, making them the only examples of the fine silversmith’s art during the second half third century BC when the city was at the top of its power and prosperity. 

Can you imagine the craftsmanship that existed already in Alexander’s days? Hard to fathom. 

[Click here to see all the pictures from the Morgantina Museum]

Was Hannibal superior to Alexander? No way!

There really is no way to compare Alexander and Hannibal, I know, but I lately watched a program about the exploits of Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants, in which it was mentioned that Hannibal achieved the greatest exploit ever by crossing the Alps. Is that so? How about Alexander crossing the Hindu Kush? This was simply too much for me and I went in search of some facts and figures to defend the case of Alexander.

I will not deny that Hannibal leading his army and most of all his elephants over the Alps in 218 BC (at the beginning of the Second Punic War with Rome) was a quite unique and daring undertaking, but there is no way this achievement could match or surpass Alexander’s march across the Hindu Kush roughly some one hundred years earlier.

The figures recorded by Polybius reveal that Hannibal traveled with 40,000 foot soldiers, 4,000 horsemen, and 37 elephants. Alexander on the other hand, having left Macedonia with 40,000 soldiers and 1,500 cavalry, lead an army of 100,000 men, an unknown number of cavalry and horses, and no elephants over the unforgiving heights of the Hindu Kush.

On top of that, there is no way to compare the Alps with the Hindu Kush. Once again I let the figures speak for themselves. The highest top of the Alps is Mont Blanc reaching 4,810 meters, while the highest summit of the Hindu Kush lies at 7,690 meters. Consequently, the passes over the respective mountain ranges are situated at quite different altitudes as well. Scholars have argued at length about the most probable route Hannibal could have followed. Based on the reports from Polybius and Livy, it is generally agreed that the lowest pass, the Col de Montgenèvre between Briançon in France and Susa in Italy was the most probable choice, located at 1,854 meters. Alexander on the other hand used the Khawak Pass at 3,848 meters in 329 BC when he moved his huge army from the Kabul Valley in Afghanistan to Bactria in the north. Two years later he crossed the Hindu Kush in the opposite direction to enter Pakistan, using the easier yet more famous Khyber Pass situated at 1,070 meters.

Of course, crossing the Alps by itself was an exploit and the Romans themselves felt they were a solid natural barrier. Crossing them with elephants was absolute madness (Hannibal was probably driven by his deep hatred for the Romans) and in the end it seems that only two dozen of them survived the expedition. Yet, that by itself is not enough, in my eyes, to place him above Alexander! His march is a heroic one in its own right, generally not stressed enough as it is very hard for us in the West to imagine what the overall travel conditions through the Hindu Kush range and passes and what its challenges are. Alexander’s men suffered dearly, especially in 329 BC as winter lingered on much longer than usual and the troops were often caught in blizzards where men and beasts froze to death if they dared stop moving. 

More often than not Alexander is forgotten in our western history while he opened up much of Asia. For ten years, his amazing campaigns lead him all the way to India across unforgiving deserts, wide and fast-flowing rivers, and daring mountain ranges of which the Hindu Kush definitely is the highest. The story of Hannibal’s elephants or the conquests of Julius Caesar in France, Germany, and Britain are much more familiar to us than Alexander’s challenging and daring march through Asia. That is not fair!

[Pictures from Wikipedia]

Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justin

The full title of this book is: Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeus Trogus, Volume I, Books 11-12, Alexander the Great. Translated and appendices by J.C. Yardley. Commentary by Waldemar Heckel (ISBN 0-19-814908-5).

The content of this book is far from straightforward, although, in the end, one could simply say this is a history of Alexander the Great. But …

The complexity starts with the authors. Marcus Junianus Justinus, Justin in short, probably lived in the 2^nd/3^rd century AD. He is said to have arrived in Rome around 200 AD, where he came to know the 44 books called the Philippic Histories written by a certain Trogus. Pompeius Trogus was a prominent historian from Gallia Narbonesis, probably from Vaison-la-Romaine. Justin decided that Trogus’ history was far too voluminous and wrote his own abridged version. As a consequence, the precious original History of Trogus slowly but surely vanished.

Trogus’ name, however, survives among the great Latin historians and is mentioned together with Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. It has been established that he was influenced by Livy and that Curtius Rufus, in turn, was influenced by Trogus. A small world, it seems.

Unfortunately, accuracy was not one of Justin’s strong points and he was not very concerned about his sources or the chronology of the events, this last point being also a weak point in Trogus’ account.

Justin’s Books 11 and 12 deal with Alexander the Great and as announced in the present title, it is this section that has been translated by J.C. Yardley – in a mere 27 pages. The great question remains: which elements come from Trogus and which were added or interpreted later on by Justin? This is more often than not an impossible task, but Heckel’s commentary tries to sort this out. He analyses every sentence and every word in a very meticulous and precise way using all possible ancient sources and consulting an enormous bibliography of later authors which are all referenced. This commentary is in fact so extensive and detailed that one could easily find all the available books ever written about Alexander the Great. By reading only the commentary, one acquires an excellent account of Alexander’s campaigns as seen by so many different scholars over the centuries.

The Introduction to this Epitome gives useful background information about Trogus and Justin, set in their own time-frame and the book concludes with a couple of very useful Appendices.

This is not exactly bedtime reading but a very thorough analysis of the massive literature ever written about Alexander the Great.