Rome's Lost Empire

Courtesy of the BBC and Discovery, shown here in the UK on December 9th. Wrong on so many levels.
Let's just start with the title. What precisely is 'lost'? Apparently, anything and everything. Quite used to this sort of piece, downplaying what we already know, so that any fact can be presented as an amazing new discovery. Usually prepared to go along with it for the sake of some nicely filmed (and/or 3D-reconstructed) travelogue of sites and you never know there might be a nugget of something new. This, however, is a particularly egregious example.

Except for wanting to piggy-back on Simon Keay's work at Portus, it was entirely unclear why they kept coming back here. Was any of this new? An amphitheatre was discovered in 2009 (is this the same one?). The site of the lighthouse underneath the scrap yard has been known since 2007. I might take more convincing that what little we were shown can be turned into a canal all the way to Rome. Was the graphic artist consciously thinking of Barad-dur and the Eye of Sauron at the end there...?

So to Dacia. And here we touch on two of my areas of interest, so things get even worse. The lidar plot was great. Would love to see more (would love to know who actually processed it, as our intrepid space archaeologist seemed to have developed an entirely new skill set in seconds flat). Although I haven't seen those features so well mapped before, I'm quite sure that patently obvious bank and ditch hadn't excaped the notice of the local archaeologists until our dynamic duo arrived. There's a quite similar plan in Stefan 2005 Guerres Daciques de Domitien et de Trajan.

The desert around Petra was quite well settled? What a revelation. The limes Tripolitanus was used to regulate the passage of people in and out of the empire? Who'd have thought. Twenty sites up and down the valley? I count about ten on the large scale Pelagios mapping. Poor.

I don't think it did Sarah Parcak any favours, either. The programme didn't really set out to explain what it was she actually did, or how she did it (except to 'find' things that didn't appear to be lost in the first place). I was quite impressed with the previous documentary on her work on Egypt. Now I'm left wondering how much of that was really new at all...

Binchester in Britannia

The inscription from Binchester (mentioned once or twice before) is now published in Britannia 43 (2012), 399 No. 6.

I see the reading sacel(lum) has disappeared and we're back to sacer (which is what it looked like to me all along). I'm not sure about Tertullo e]t Sacer(dote) cos; even if the consular date of 158 is attractive, the preceding fragment doesn't look like the bottom of a T to me. But it is hard to find another context in Imperial nomenclature or the name of the relevant unit (which ought to precede the formulation cui praest...praefectus equitum). We might go for Elagabalus, who was styled sacerdos amplissimus dei invicti solis, but the only example of this from Britain (RIB1465 from Chesters) is a restoration of a mutilated (post damnatio) text. The fragmentary RIB 1915 from Birdoswald contained another possible sace]rdo but is now even more fragmentary than when initially recorded and little help.

A legionary of Legio XI in Britain?

Details of the following inscription apparently found at Marton in Lincolnshire have recently been added to the county Historic Environment Record:

The text is straightforward:
Marti sanc|to sacrum | C(aius) Iul(ius) Anto|ninus mil(es) | [le]g(ionis) XI Cl(audiae) | [e]x voto posu|uit

the context less so. The legio XI Claudia is otherwise unattested in Britain and for most of its existence served in the Danubian provinces. How a serving soldier of that legion comes to be making a dedication to Mars at a rural settlement on the western fringe of Lincolnshire is the immediate, and potentially very interesting, question. Except... the provenance is a little suspect. Apparently found at the edge of a field by someone walking along the lane, reported to Retford museum (at least), but since sold at auction for several thousand pounds.

Could this be a case of a manufactured provenance for an eastern European artefact allowing it to be sold on legitimately in the UK? Seems a large object to transport, but then if it can be worth £3500 you might go to the effort. Mind you if the story I hear is true, then the 'finder' sold it on to someone else who then got the £3500 at auction so either the plot becomes more convoluted, or the initial sale wasn't as lucrative as all that.

Is there any reason to think it real (or really from Marton)? The lane is on the line of a Roman road (leading to the Trent crossing at Littleborough); there is a Roman fort just to the south and a Romano-British settlement just to the north. The fort is assumed to be early and temporary (all that is known is the cropmark of an enclosing ditch); the settlement is more long-lived (quite possibly there first). Legio XI was on the Rhine from about AD70 to the end of the first century and reinforcements from that source not out of the question but we still don't have a good context for an ex voto dedication to Mars just here...

Ksar el Birsgaun

This really arises out of mapping and the production of my Legio XX inscriptions map, so perhaps an issue really for my other blog, but it does point up a more general problem with some older records of discoveries, to whit, where on earth is Ksar el Birsgaun?

This is the recorded provenance of the tombstone set up by Julius Victor for his sister according to CIL VIII 2080. Unfortunately the place seems to have ceased to exist...

The main problem seems to be that these minor places in what is now Algeria are either no longer occupied or no longer bear the names recorded by French geographers in the 19th century. What I really need is a detailed 19th century gazeteer (and possibly a French one at that).

From somewhere I have Ksar el Birsgaun = Berzegan. But Berzegan proves very elusive itself. Soumat el Kheneg is apparently 9km south of Berzegan (which might be a place or might just be a valley) and Soumat el Kheneg appears in the Barrington Atlas (hurrah!) so I can at least take a reasonable guess

Mapping legio XX Valeria Victrix

I seem to remember promising something along these lines a while back (probably quite a while back). Inscriptions searchable through the EDH and Clauss-Slaby databases have for some time been geolocated. In this era of easily accessible online global mapping it has to be the way forward. Updating my database of inscriptions with latitude and longitude was the easy part, but I never quite found the right way to present them (it still might not be quite right way, but here we go). However, I do rather like the Imperium tile set created by the Pelagios Project, so here is a first attempt at putting some of this information on a map (or use the link in the sidebar).

Too many coincident points at some places (eg Chester!) for this to truly work; some inscriptions refer to people known from other sources to have served with the legion and are not particularly informative in themselves; I will find a better marker symbol eventually (or revert to something stansdardised)... The list of what is wrong with this goes on, but for now I hope it demonstrates the geographical range of the dataset reasonably well.

[NB If you're accessing this through the lexioxx.org.uk website then you may need to clear your cache, or refresh the sidebar (if your browser allows). And, yes I know, nobody uses frames anymore... given that I only really update this through blog entries these days, I'm afraid I have felt little impetus to rebuild the site from the ground up.]

A legion at Thebes

Was there a legionary fortress at Thebes? I rather doubted Farnum's assertion (Positioning of the Roman Legions 2006) but his spare approach to referencing made it difficult to see on what basis he came to this conclusion (perhaps Speidel 1982 'Augustus' deployment of the legions in Egypt', ultimately). The argument is from Strabo 17.12 who says that there were three legions in Egypt (in the early Augustan period; one in the city (Alexandria) and two in the countryside). That one was in the south of the country is supposition. That is was based in a fortress at Thebes is more supposition. Yes, several centurions of leg XXII inscribed their names on the statue of Amenhotep III; yes, the legion III Diocletiana is listed there, very much later, in the Notitia Dignitatum; but no, there is no evidence of a full scale imperial legionary fortress (or at least if there is I'd love to hear about it).


Strabo goes on

17.30 at Babylon (Cairo) 'is an encampment of one of the three legions that guard Aegypt'

17.41 'One comes next to the Hermopolitic garrison, a kind of toll-station for goods brought down from the Thebaïs...and then to the Thebaïc garrison'

This does leave us needing to find a place for a third legion, but I'm not sure talk of a 'garrison' at Thebes is enough to assume a legionary fortress (but I ought really to look at the Greek text before drawing too many conclusions from precise terminology) .

Reading further, 17.53-4 would imply no more than three cohorts in the Thebaid (Syene) and when there is talk of a 'fortress' at Premnis this is to hold only 400 men. It would seem that an auxiliary garrison was considered enough to meet any external threat from this quarter.

Later legends of a Theban legion "legio militum, qui Thebaei appellabantur" converting en masse to Christianity are another thing entirely...

Victorious Valerians II

Back to the origin of 'valeria'...

Webster quotes Birley's suggestion that just as Claudius named his son 'Britannicus' in honour of the conquest of Britain, so he might have named the Twentieth legion 'Valeria' in honour of his wife. The idea that Valeria is from Valeria Messalina can in fact be traced back to 1719, and may have a certain merit, as we shall see, but Birley's logic is difficult to follow. The emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus carried the honorific Germanicus of his father Drusus. Giving his son the name Tiberius Claudius Britannicus is entirely in keeping with custom (if declining it himself is less so). Naming a legion for his wife hardly fits in the same category (it would be a unique instance). However...

Claudius is the first emperor to give legions such an Imperial cognomen. The numerous legions 'Augusta' are named in honour of the emperor but do not take the imperial nomen (it ought perhaps to result in 'Julia' after his adoption, but the C Julius part was dropped from official nomenclature fairly early on). We have Flavia and Ulpia later, but the VII and XI Claudia are the first such. Given that this was an innovation on the part of Claudius, perhaps some sort of equivalent honour from the gens Valeria of his wife might not be impossible. The main difficulty is that we have a good context for the first and not for the second. But...

Valeria Messalina was related to Valerius Messallinus as the nomenclature suggests. In the absence of the final volume of PIR2, I'm not sure of current thought on the precise family relationship. Try following Wikipedia references to the family and you will find some contradiction (obviously I need to see Christian Settipani 2000 Continuité gentilice et continuité sénatoriale dans les familles sénatoriales romaines à l'époque impériale) but she could in fact have been the granddaughter of the M Valerius Messalla Messallinus who led legio XX to victory in Illyricum in AD6 and received Triumphal ornaments. The legion had an illustrious connection with the gens Valeria. Allowing the legion to take this name as a favour to his wife is perhaps something Claudius might have contemplated. Notable service in the invasion might have been sufficient impetus. It seems to have been the only legion involved to have no other designation.The subsequent disgrace and death of Messalina might have resulted in a certain reticence in its early useage, but the gens Valeria remained prominent in public life and a Valerius Messala was consul as late as 196.

It does seem to me that straining for an alternative explanation ignores the fact that the natural reading would be 'the Valerian legion' and that many people would have taken it as such at face value, indeed Cassius Dio does precisely that when referring to the legion in his Histories.