Hairiness Makes the Man

Now it's time for another look at the The Curious Case of Elagabalus' Beard.

When we left the murdered emperor, as you may remember, the Senator and historian Cassius Dio had just given us this titillating bit of gossip about Elagabalus:

He worked with wool, sometimes wore a hair-net, and painted his eyes, daubing them with white lead and alkanet [a red-dyed ointment used to colour faces, similar to modern rouge]. Once, indeed, he shaved his chin and held a festival to mark the event; but after that he had the hairs plucked out, so as to look more like a woman.

And I wrote in rebuttal: Greeks and Romans liked to believe that all orientals devoted themselves to luxury: that they stayed indoors in their self-indulgence, were thus pale and unmanly, and never seen by anyone except their eunuchs and wives. Elagabalus had proved himself not to be a Roman; therefore he was a Syrian, and depraved, extravagant, and feminine.

This is how it works.

The naked Greek, captioned as saying "I am Eurymedon" -- referring to the river where the Greeks won a major victory over the Persians in the early 460's BC -- strides forward holding his erect penis as if to penetrate the terrified Persian archer (who says, "I stand bent over") pictured on the other side of the vase.

It could hardly be clearer: We can bugger the Persians because they are softies and begging for it.

Real men do not present their bottoms to other men. That is what women do ('softies' by definition), as do luckless slaves (having no choice) and barbarians, too. Fair of face, white, clean-shaven, woman-voiced, soft, pretty: the man who looks like a woman will sexually perform like a woman -- a passive sodomite. Even if an emperor, the oriental is the opposite of 'hairy-rumped', 'hard' westerners, who are penetrators by nature. Hairlessness and softness indicates effeminacy, and are signs of the penetratee.

Admittedly, the depicted Persian is bearded, but the bent-over rear-entry posture makes the point. As do some lines from Athenian comedy:

Envoy: "Only those Persians are accounted MEN who drink the hardest, and who eat the most."
Athenian: "And we consider [such men] cock-suckers and buggers."

Indeed they did.

[Elagabalus] set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by.

Or, as Aristophanes would have put it so prettily, he was a "young shaver of his hot-tempered anus."

There is no evidence for this unknowable predilection. But Elagabalus certainly wasn't hairless on the outside. For, as the picture at the top of this post shows, he had a moustache.

The problem is, as Adrian Murdoch observed on Bread and Circuses, that “There is no [other] image in the whole history of the empire showing a Roman wearing a moustache on its own. Indeed ... there is not even a Latin word for ‘moustache’.”

Whereupon, David Derrick of Toynbee convector, commented, "The Dying Gaul has a rather nice moustache. But he's not Roman or even Greek...."

In search of moustaches

The kingdom of Pergamum in western Asia Minor became a centre of Greek learning under its kings Attalus I (241-197 BC) and Eumenes II (197-159 BC). Hordes of Gauls had invaded Asia Minor and had become the terror and scourge of the whole region. Attalus I early in his reign gained an important victory over these fierce tribes, and this victory was commemorated by extensive groups of sculpture. The Dying Gaul belongs to this series. That the man represented is a Gaul is proved by what is known from literary sources of the Gallic peculiarities – the stiff, pomaded hair growing low in the neck, the twisted collar or torque, and the moustache worn with shaven cheeks and chin.

So, third-century B.C. Gauls wore moustaches. Barbarian!

Surena

This bronze of a Parthian prince is thought to represent Surena (more correctly, Eran Spahbodh Rustaham Suren-Pahlav, born in 84 BC). The name Surena, under which he appears in the classical sources is his hereditary title, meaning 'of the House of Suren'.

Plutarch, in the Life of Crassus, tells us that

Surena was an extremely distinguished man. In wealth, birth, and in the honor paid to him, he ranked next after the king; in courage and ability he was the foremost Parthian of his time; and in stature and personal beauty he had no equal. When he travelled about the country on his own affairs, he was always accompanied by a baggage train of 1,000 dromedaries; 200 wagons carried his harem; 1,000 armored cavalry and still more light armed cavalry acted as his escort.... He had, as an ancient privilege of his family, the right to be the first to set the crown on the head of the king of Parthia at the coronation.

This Surena 's greatest claim to fame, however, is that he beat the Roman commander Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC , one of the worst defeats of a Roman army in all their history (20,000 dead; 10,000 captured) -- they will not suffer a worse defeat until 300 years later, in the time of Zenobia.

Even this victory of the soft over the super-hard does not dent the stereotype and Plutarch adds in a slightly puzzled voice: the delicacy of his looks and effeminacy of his dress did not promise so much manhood as he really was master of; his face was painted, and his hair parted after the fashion of the Medes ..."

So, first-century BC Parthian noblemen wore moustaches. Oriental!

The Heavenly Twins

I'm pleased as punch to have discovered Syrian moustaches too -- and at Palmyra, no less (thanks to the extraordinary number of funerary portraits from tower tombs and the underground built tombs). While most Palmyran men are clean-shaven, a fair number are bearded and some very few wear only moustaches: still, just from books in my own library, I found two good examples from the second-century AD.

Azizu, one of the Heavenly Twins who protected the caravans, is shown on the relief to the left (precisely dated by its inscription to 154 AD) with a moustache. He and and his twin, Arsu, were usually pictured as two moustached men in military dress, with broad swords strapped at the waist and long spears in hand. The Palmyrans likened them to the stars which guided caravans across the desert night: Arsu the camel-rider rises, and, as he falls away, Azizu on horseback comes into sight.



Where the good gods lead, mortals are sure to follow. This bas-relief of a young man is from the second half of the same century. On the flat background to the right of the figure's head, an inscription gives his name, Atetan son of Corbulon, and the single sad word, "Alas!". Following a Roman tradition, Atetan wears a ring with a wide band set with a round stone on the little finger of his left hand, a custom that became popular among both men and women after the year 150.

So, second-century AD Palmyran godlets and men wore moustaches. Oriental!


As Palmyra is less than 100 miles (160 km) across the desert from Emesa, ancestral home of the 4 Julia's, it is reasonable to suppose that Elagabalus was following a local, eastern custom when (briefly, it seems) he wore a moustache. That wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't also danced instead of walked and worn silk gowns instead of togas.

You give the name of sodomite to those who either put on a little perfume or dress in garments a little too dainty. You ought not, therefore, when rigged up in that fashion, to be in such a flutter .... or take about in your train lovers with shaven chins and posteriors...

Taken together, it was lethal. He was Oriental, no doubt about it.

Off with his head!

Hurrying back from Crete

Zenobia has been silent these last few weeks due to my working on 'Minoan Crete' -- not digging this time but studying stuff already excavated: nice and clean work for a change. Now I'm flying to my desk, an imaginary passenger in this divine chariot drawn by a Cretan wild goat (with the long curved horns of an agrimi, a species that still survives in the high White Mountains and on the barren islet of Theodorou off the north coast of Crete). The picture comes from the Ayia Triada sarcophagus (14th century BC) and is usually interpreted as showing two goddesses escorting the dead ruler interred within on his journey to the netherworld. But I just wonder if the driver holding the whip and reins is not the sole goddess in the scene while the passenger in the foreground is a Minoan queen on her way to the afterworld.

Too much sun, perhaps.

Coming up very soon: another look at The Curious Case of Elagabalus' Beard or Hairiness Makes the Man.

I’m a Rockin' Girl Blogger

I’m really chuffed. Our first award: Zenobia’s and mine, that is.


Zenobia rocks? Look, if an aged-academic-dirt-archaeologist-
historical-novelist-cum-blogger rocks, who says the Empress of the East can’t be a Rockin’ Girl too?

Thank you, Gabriele C. of The Lost Fort for this crown on our first seven months of existence (the blog was born on 3 January 2007).

One of the obligations of a Rockin’ Girl is to spread this happiness, so I grant a special Rockin’ Grrls joint award to IntLawGrrls, a great new blog (international law, policy, practice) that takes seriously the idea that “women now have a hand in our world’s affairs” ... so get on with it, grrls! It's a group blog, so it gets all five of my Rockin’ Grrls nominations (‘five with one blow’). Rock on!

Hatshepsut is Back! (Updated)

This seems to be my mummy week.

Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass announced that one of two female mummies found in a small and undecorated, robbed-out tomb (KV60) in the Valley of the Kings over a century ago has now been identified as Hatshepsut, "the greatest woman monarch of the ancient world." As the media will be full of this story -- and Dr Hawass has a lengthy, illustrated piece on his own website -- I would like to focus instead on two points of uncommon interest.

First, how and why did Hapshepsut (and her woman friend, thought to be the royal wet-nurse, Sitre-In) get moved out of the great mummy cache, known as Deir el Bahri 320?

Second, why was Hapshepsut's mummy long thought to be that of Sitre-In?

Royal Mummy Caches

The High Priests of Amun, who controlled the Theban area during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties hid the bodies of many of the kings and queens of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Dynasties in a series of secret tombs in the Valley of the Kings. For over a century, the official version goes, the High Priests had struggled in vain to check the plundering of the noble dead, the pharaohs and great families of the empire. It is equally likely -- particularly if you have an evil mind, like mine -- that the stripping of the dead had not been done by local robbers, but by the state itself, hungry for gold at a time of economic decline. Whichever the true story, undoubtedly, by the turn of the first millennium BC, it was a pretty battered set of royal mummies and relations that residual piety demanded should be saved.

In Pharaoh Siamum's tenth year (c. 969 BC) , it was decided to secure the remains by interment in one or two large groups of secret hiding-places. One group, including 50 kings, princes, and courtiers, with almost 6,000 accompanying objects, went into the secret tomb (DB320) of Pinudjem II, reigning High Priest and ruler of Thebes and southern Egypt. Some of these mummies had already been shifted one or more times, shedding treasures along the way, while this mass transfer also made it all too likely that, every now and again, one king's mummy would be placed in the coffin of another, or that a mummy, ready for rewrapping, would mistakenly be listed under the wrong name. Some mummies ended up with no identification at all associated with them any more.

The mummies of named kings found in this cache were Seqenenre-Tao, who had fought the Hyksos, Ahmose I, the founder of the New Kingdom, the revered Amenophis I, the first three Tutmosids [that is to say, Hatshepsut's father (I) and husband (II), as well as her ungrateful stepson (III)], Seti I, Ramesses II, III and IX, and the empty coffin of Ramesses I.

Among the objects was an ivory box that bore the cartouche of Hatshepsut (below the knob and between the two dark stripes), which contained the liver and inner bits of the queen and a single tooth: in principle, her mummy should have been there as well, because the box was never meant to have been separated from the mummy.

What happened to her mummy?

It was not in DB320, for the tooth (a molar) -- which must have fallen out while Hatshepsut was being embalmed and carefully placed with her viscera -- did not fit any likely female mummy in the cache.


Hatshepsut's original burial was in KV 20, a tomb consisting of 4 tunnels, each about 213 meters (650') long. Over the course of their length, the tunnels bend to form a half circle: it is believed that the tomb took this shape so that it would end at the axis of Queen Hatshepsut's splendid temple at Deir el Bahri, so that the burial chamber would lie directly beneath the holy of holies.

In 1902, Howard Carter and Theodore Davies discovered an empty sarcophagus made of sandstone inscribed for Hatshepsut as a pharaoh in the burial chamber of KV20, as well as a second empty sarcophagus belonging to her father, Thutmose I, presumably ordered by Hatshepsut so that she could move her father’s body into it.

The next year, in front of KV 20, Carter also discovered the tomb KV60. This tomb contained the two damaged female mummies, one in a decorated coffin, the other one on the floor. Because the tomb had been robbed and was undecorated, he closed the tomb again after a short inspection.

In 1906 Edward Ayrton opened KV60 again. He moved the mummy which was lying in the coffin together with the coffin to the Egyptian Museum at Cairo. This coffin is inscribed with the name of Sitre-In, who has been meanwhile identified as the nurse of Hatshepsut.

The 2nd mummy of a partially unwrapped, fat lady (with huge pendulous breasts) of middle age, worn-down teeth, and red-blond dyed hair was left in the tomb lying on the floor. The woman had been mummified with her arms in the position that has been usual for queens during the 18th Dynasty - with the left arm bent over the chest. The tomb was closed again.

Recently, Dr Hawass reopened KV60 and inspected the Fat Lady mummy. This convinced him that she was more likely the wet-nurse than the queen because:

the very obese lady died at an advance age, was not very thoroughly mummified, and had huge pendulous breasts (not unusual for a nurse), the position of the left arm was not always restricted to royalty.

In contrast, the mummy brought to the Museum was more likely that of Hatshepsut, because :

• the right arm is extended at her side, the left arm is resting across the abdomen,
• the left hand is closed as if it was holding something,
• the lady was very thoroughly mummified and originally wrapped in fine linen, the fingers bandaged individually,
• the mummy had long wavy white hair, and is about 1,50 m tall, whereas the coffin is about 2,13 m and, therefore, suggesting that it was not intended for this person,
• the mummy still in KV60 is significantly taller and would better fit in the coffin.

You can probably guess what happened next.

To the surprise of almost everyone (though some are disguising it better than others) the Fat Lady has now been identified as the mummy of Hatshepsut.

The key to this identification is the tooth found in the ivory box from the cache DB320: in recent CT-scans, the tooth can be seen to fit exactly into a gap in the upper jaw of this mummy.

Why was Hatshepsut's mummy unrecognized?

Just ten days ago (and not for the first time) on the EEF-List, Egyptologist Marianne Luban questioned all the unspoken assumptions including:

• Why does there have to be a "wet-nurse" involved at all? The presence of "large breasts" on an obese old lady is hardly an uncommon phenomenon indicating that profession!
• The inscribed coffin was obviously made for someone named Sitre-In, but now could perfectly well be occupied by someone else.
• If the body found on the floor was taller than the one in the coffin, it still doesn't mean that it belonged to her either.
• 
  

So Marianne's view before yesterday's announcement: "Some years back, I got hold of a large photo of the profile of this [fat] lady and did a reconstruction. The result was very like the profile of Ahmes, the mother of Hatshepsut, with her strong features. I'd place my money on those two women [in KV 60] being related--not royal lady and servant."

Well, she picked a winner with Hapshepsut's mummy.

Who says that "a fat, big breasted, woman with dyed long hair" could not possibly be a queen? Though she never would have let herself be pictured like that, of course.

Who would?

Hatshepsut died at around the age of 50 -- in those days, already an old woman -- probably as a result of bone cancer (not liver cancer as also reported, but "a 2cm wide tumor in her left leg"), and she was obese and suffered from diabetes.

Despite her hard end, she was undoubtedly "the greatest woman monarch of the ancient world."

Nonetheless, she was sadly and rudely transported and robbed. But when? Two last speculations:

First, she may never have been in DB320. It would make sense for her (and the second female) to have been moved the short distance directly from KV20 to KV 60 during the 21st Dynasty, when so many other kings were moved. If so, how did the ivory box get to DB320? One possibility is that it was accidentally removed when her father, Thutmosis I, was taken from KV20 and given a new tomb, KV38, by his grandson, Thutmosis III. He did end up (it seems) much later in DB320.

More importantly, if unlikely, that would mean that her reign was still remembered as late as the 21st Dynasty, despite the destruction of her monuments and erasure of her name.

Or, of course, a cruelly vindictive Thutmosis III unceremoniously booted her out of KV20 right after removing his grandfather. Stuff happens.


Update: Mark Rose has a good review of Discovery Channel's 'Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen' (aired 15 July at 9 pm EST), Hatshepsut Found; Thutmose I Lost -- knowledgeable and a more than a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

Updated 19 March 2009: The April issue of National Geographic has a rather overwritten story by Chip Brown, "The King Herself. What motivated Hatshepsut to rule ancient Egypt as a man while her stepson stood in the shadows? Her mummy, and her true story, have come to light". Little that is new except for the failure of DNA tests to come up with a clear answer to the 'Is She or Isn't She?' question:

"With ancient specimens you never have a 100 percent match, because the genetic sequences aren't complete," says Angélique Corthals, a professor of biomedicine and forensic studies at Stony Brook University in New York. "We looked at mitochondrial DNA for the suspected Hatshepsut mummy and her grandmother Ahmose Nefertari. There is about a 30 to 35 percent chance that the two samples are not related, but I cannot emphasize enough that these are just preliminary results." Another round of tests may soon deliver a clearer verdict.

Stupendous photographs, especially the close-ups of the mummy.

My thanks to David Gill at the Ancient World Bloggers Group for the tip-off.

New Salt Mummy from Persia (with multiple updates)

Not long after the last Parthian emperor fell before the sword of Ardashir, the first Sassanian Persian King of Kings (228 AD) -- thus setting off the events that would lead to the death of Severus Alexander and his mother, Julia Mamaea, and to a lot more blogging on my part -- an insignificant salt-mine worker from northwestern Iran lost his life in a catastrophic rock collapse. Just this month, the man's body — preserved in salt — was discovered in the very same spot where he died. The unlucky fellow is the sixth "salt man" to be found at the Chehr Abad mine in Zanjan province.

The head pictured above is not from the new mummy -- who will be left in situ under a pile of salt and dirt until better means of museum preservation are developed -- but part of a body discovered in 1993/1994. This miner was about 35 years old, with long white hair (bleached by the salt?) and a beard. When discovered, he was wearing leather boots and had on or near him three iron knives, a silver needle, a sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, a walnut (one?!?), some pottery sherds, a woollen half trouser and other textile fragments, and a few broken bones. He sported at least one earring. C14 tests date the mummy to ± 1745 BP ("Before Present", as scientists like to say).


Salt Mummy 4, found in March 2005, is the best preserved body. He was about sixteen years of age and 165-170 cm (5' 3-4") tall. The lad wore two earrings and was dressed in a knee-length quilted garment and thigh-high leggings, and had an iron dagger in a scabbard around his waist. Nearby were two pottery vessels (containing oil) that may have been used as lanterns. Niels Lynnerup, a mummification expert from the University of Copenhagen, will attempt to reconstruct the teenager's face, too youthful to have had any trace of a beard. To do this, he will use around 1,000 MRI images of the body and face. After the reconstruction of the face, a polymer statue of the 'salt boy' will be produced.

The salt mummies are virtually unique. Two flattened 'salt men' were recovered in the world's most ancient salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria in 1573 and 1734 . This mine was in operation until the 4th century BC, and closed down after a catastrophic landslide which devastated the Salzberg Valley and buried the unhappy miners. Their skin was said to have been intact and only tinged brown from the effects of salt. Both were both given decent burial but, as heathens, outside of the church graveyard.

No chance of that today: we are all ghouls now.

Mark Pollard of Oxford University (with whom I had the pleasure of working many years ago) and Don Brothwell of York University will study the mummies in the coming year. They’ll take DNA samples of the five ‘salt men’ and will examine their diet, health, and age before death. It is ironic in a way that, when the scientists are finished, we shall know more about their way of life and genes than we do about Ardashir, King of Kings.

You can stay updated on the fate of the 'salt men' on the excellent Mummy News site.



Further update (8 February 2008): New Mining License Endangers Ancient Iranian Salt Mummies http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2008/February2008/07-02.htm

Update 2 (16 May 2008): Ancient Salt Men of Zanjan Find Permanent Residence
http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2008/May2008/14-05-ancient.htm

Update 3 (1 July 2008): Iranian, foreign experts to excavate salt men’s necropolis . A joint team of Iranian and foreign experts will collaborate on a project to excavate the Chehrabad Salt Mine, where all six of the “salt men” were discovered. Archaeologists from Germany, England, and Austria will participate in the project expected to begin in spring 2009. http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=708534
(via Antonio Lombatti).

Update 4 (12 June 2010): Iran's Salt Men Saved! (Via RogueClasicism)

In February 2009, Iranian media reported that four of the salt men kept at the Zolfaqari Museum were in a critical condition due to loose plexiglass cases that had been designed for storing these mummies. The cases were not hermetically sealed and changes in air temperature and pressure had created cracks in them, allowing bacteria and insects to enter and do damage to the mummies.

A year and a half and $ 75,000 later, we hear that three showcases, each at a cost of 250,000,000 rials (about $25,000), have been specially designed for the salt men. The cases have been equipped with devices, which enable experts to monitor conditions inside and keep them under full control.

Inshallah!

Zenobia's Terrible Curved Sword

One last look at Zenobia: the Musical - the Dubai megaproduction written and directed by composer Mansour Rahbani - which I've already written about twice, here and here. Readers of my earlier posts will imagine that I am going to complain about Carole Samaha's costume ....


... you may imagine something on the order of "Why oh why is she dressed in Roman military drag, for heaven's sake; those are her enemies? What's wrong with Palmyran military outfits?" Or with a disapproving click of the tongue, "Why is she wearing a muscled breastplate? That went out of fashion - even for Roman commanders - ages ago." Or, "She's holding a Roman parade-ground mask instead of a battle helmet; she won't be able to see a thing on the battlefield with that on." And then, tutting under my breath "She's showing bare legs." That would have have marked her as a harlot as surely in third-century Syria as it would on the streets of Dubai today.

But, no, not a bit of it. There will be no tutting about her costume.

Instead, I am going to talk about her sword. You will notice that it is curved.

"Yes", you say, "Arab swords tend to be curved." Exactly. The subliminal message is clear. It is also entirely wrong. The curved sword is a terrible anachronism ... by about 1100 years.

Let's first go back to Palmyra: their swords, like Roman swords, were always double-edged and straight. Always. No exceptions.

On the right, the remains of a1st-century AD Palmyran officer (and do note his cuirass of scale armour; no old muscled stuff for him): he carries a Roman gladius-type sword, a short but quite murderous weapon used primarily for thrusting.





This elegantly dressed Chief Merchant (left), who lived a little before Zenobia's time in the 3rd-century AD, wears a long sword. This sword is very similar to the Roman spatha -- the long slashing sword of choice from the end of the 2nd century onwards. Roman soldiers usually wore the spatha suspended from a baldric but our Palmyran nobleman lets it hang from a waist band - presumably a lighter weapon than the military issue.

On the other side of the Euphrates, the Sassanian-Persians, too, were armed with long straight swords, and that remained the Persian blade until the very end of their days of empire.

On the left, you see a particularly fine 7th-century Sassanian sword and scabbard (Metropolitan Museum of Art): it has an entirely straight iron blade; the wooden scabbard is covered with gold and embellished with garnets and glass-paste.

The sword of Arab conquest

When the Arabs overthrew the last Sassanian rulers and went on to conquer Syria, Egypt and points west, Mohammed and his later successors were fighting with swords like those on the right (Istanbul Military Museum, 7th-8th centuries).

And so it goes. The swords used by Arab warriors right through the 12th and 13th centuries were almost always straight, double-edged weapons not very different from those of the conquest period.

The Saber arrives

It is not until near the end of the 13th century that curved, single-edged blades are introduced and they only slowly become the common weapon of Arab warriors. A Persian/Turkman miniature dated 1388 from Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) shows combat with long straight swords still at this late date.



The change from straight swords to the curved saber in the Levant and Arabian peninsula occurred after the Turkish Selçuk migration into Anatolia. They brought with them the 13th century Turko-Mongol saber. This simple, one handed, curved blade originated in Central Asia and was widely used by the Turkic peoples of the region and by the Mongols. These are single-handed swords, sporting a single edged, variably curved blade. Its slashing, chopping effectiveness for mounted warriors had lasting effects in the Arab/Islamic world, Persia, India and Eastern Europe as well. The Turko-Mongol saber birthed the entire saber design; its descendants in turn produced even more kinds of curved swords.

Swords ranged from only slightly curved to moderately curved until, in the 15th century, the Persians developed the highly curved scimitar (meaning 'tail of the lion').

















The scimitar soon became the characteristic Arab sword, an image now indelibly associated with Arabs - not only in the minds of Westerners, but of Arabs themselves .... as witness the Saudi Arabian coat of arms.



All cultures, without exception, shape their pasts for political purposes of the present. Still, it is the historian's job to point out when such pasts are completely groundless.

I rest my case.

Maximinus and the Mystery of Monte del Grano (Part II)

un'importantissimo e misterioso monumento

In the Campagna countryside (as it was then, although less than three miles from the walls of Rome and the Porta San Giovanni) rises an artificial hill named Monte del Grano = Mountain of Grain, so-called as it resembled an overturned bushel of grain. The peasants believed that the grain had been turned into earth as divine punishment because it had been harvested on a Sunday. And indeed the conical mound was an odd feature in the landscape: it is clearly marked on a map dated 1547, drawn by Eufrosino della Volpaia, a clockmaker and inventor of astrolabes and, this being the Renaissance, also a practicing architect and skilled cartographer.

Soon afterwards, it attracted the interest of Roman antiquarians, who recognized it as a sepulchral monument of the same type as the Mausoleum of Augustus and Tomb of Hadrian (now better known as Castel Sant'Angelo). In fact, Monte del Grano comes third after those tombs in size and magnificence. It, too, was once covered with slabs of travertine marble (similar to the stone-facing on the Egyptian pyramids, from which the Roman mausolea descended). These blocks disappeared long ago: a late medieval document (1387) grants a certain Nicolò Valentini the right to take the stones and burn them to make lime.

In 1582 the antiquarians began excavating the hill.

They soon brought to light a corridor more than 60 feet long (21.5 m). This led into a vaulted burial chamber, with a diameter of 30 feet (10 m). The chamber was once divided into two levels by a vault, now collapsed, where the remains of the supporting pillars can still be seen.

Air and light filtered into the tomb from two oblique skylights. At least one skylight had been plugged with a huge circular block of travertine, carved with a giant 12-rayed star (this was last seen in 1926).

More and more bits disappeared over the years.

Around 1750, in one of his famous 'Views of Rome', Piranesi drew a plan and a section of the mausoleum. This shows a ring-shaped corridor leading to two other access corridors and a stairway that led to an underground room. Recent excavation (1991) does not confirm his reconstruction, but, all the same, it is a charming, romantic drawing.

What Piranesi's plan misses entirely is the outer sections of the tomb. It was certainly surrounded by a cylinder made of travertine blocks. A bottom row of such blocks was found in place, missed by Master Valentini and his lime-burning crew. The cylinder probably supported the cone-shaped mound, which might have been covered by exotic vegetation, as was the mausoleum of Augustus.

Whose tomb is it anyway?

In May 1582, a man named Fabrizio Lezaro, who is otherwise unknown (at least, to me) entered the burial chamber and discovered a colossal empty sarcophagus -- almost 9 feet long x 4 feet wide (131 x 293 cm) -- carved of pure white Carrara marble (Marmo Lunense). A woman and a young man are reclining on the cover, as if on a couch. It is their tomb.


The carving is sumptuous. Scenes from the legend of Achilles adorn all four sides. The sarcophagus was undoubtedly intended for an imperial burial. But whose?

Luckily, Flaminio Vacca, the humanist and sculptor (you can see his famous Florentine lion here) was at the scene. Despite depicting the wrong hero -- one would have thought the choice would be Alexander the Great -- Vacca identified the figures portrayed on the couch as the emperor Severus Alexander and his mother Julia Mamaea.

You do remember that the last post ended with the words: and [Alexander] was granted the honour of a cenotaph in Gaul and a magnificent tomb in Rome.

Vacca remembered. This is it, he said.

Surprisingly, this identification has almost stood the test of time.

If Vacca was right, the mausoleum thus would date back to at least three years and three months (Maximinus' reign) after Alexander's death in 235 AD. The sarcophagus has been dated 240-250 AD (in the Capitoline Museum index) -- as close as archaeology ever gets to shouting 'Bingo!'.

But not so fast.

Archaeologists dither....

While one recent study (Erminio Paoletta, 1987) concluded that Vacca got it about right, another (Alberto Danti, 1998) puts the entire construction back almost a century, citing stamped bricks in the walls of the sepulchre from the first half of the 2nd century, and building techniques from the second half of that century. Adding insult to injury, Danti dates the sarcophagus, too, to the neo-classicism of the time of Hadrian (117-138 AD).

What do I think? On the one hand, those stamped bricks look serious, though they could have been recycled from an earlier structure. On the other, I find it hard to believe that, in the much better documented 2nd century, no one ever mentioned building or having seen this enormous mausoleum. On yet a third hand, I can't imagine Gordian III building this sepulchre for Alexander and his mother in his cash-strapped reign (or even wanting to, to tell the truth: he was of true Roman stock and must have despised the Syrian dynasty). That leaves Philip the Arab, another Syrian emperor (244-249 AD)....


I'll go on dithering, if I may -- and credit the last Julia with having left us a very classy mystery. Perhaps.

Maximinus and the Mystery of Monte del Grano

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Although a brute and (as the senators would not forget for a moment) a low-born brute, Maximinus has a number of ‘firsts’ to his name – not all of them to be sneered at.

1. Maximinus Thrax (“the Thracian”) was the first barbarian emperor.

This wasn’t, in a sense, the first of firsts. There had been earlier imperial firsts – pointers to a future that had now arrived:

The first emperor not born and raised in Italy had been Trajan (ruled 98-117 AD) who hailed from Spain. And, not so long ago, Septimius Severus had become the first non-European emperor (born in Libya). His son’s murderer – and briefly successor – Macrinus, was a Mauretanian (horrors, a Moor!) and the first emperor who had not been a senator. He was followed on the throne by Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, the first emperors of Syrian blood. These emperors, however, all came from families that had long enjoyed Roman citizenship and were part of the Romanized (or Hellenized) elite in the provinces. Maximinus was different.

2. Maximinus was the first emperor who was not born a Roman citizen. His peasant family was far below salt and beneath notice. He joined the army as a private soldier and, rising through the ranks, was granted citizenship.

So, it hardly matters whether you see him as semi-Romanized (a cup half full) or semi-barbarian (half-empty): to the senate and in Rome, he was a barbarian.

3. He was the first emperor actually to fight in battle, personally performing deeds of prowess, and even the most hostile sources admit his personal courage. But (and, with a barbarian, there is always a 'but') ...

His [military] achievements would have won him a reputation if he had not proved so oppressive and fearsome to his own people and his subjects. There is little point in destroying barbarians, if even more people are being murdered actually in Rome and the subject nations; nor in carrying off prisoners and plunder from the enemy, when the people at home are stripped bare of their possessions.

4. He was the first emperor never to step foot in Rome. His entire reign – from the murder of Alexander to his own death three years and three months later – was spent fighting on the northern frontiers. When he did finally head to Rome, it was to crush an uprising against him ... and much too late.

238 AD and all that

What happened is a very complicated story and I have given much thought to how to bring it to life on a blog. Plagiarism seemed best. The neatest summary I have come across is on the site De Imperatoribus Romanis and I have used this – spiced up with lots of additions and speeded up with some subtractions – as a guideline. History, lots of history, I'm afraid, but I do want to give the flavour of the chaos of the times.

Maximinus and his son, the Caesar Maximus, had been fighting against the Germans all through 235 and 236. In 237, they left the war-torn Rhine and redirected the war against the barbarians north of the Danube. The years of continual battle were exacting a financial toll, and resentment was building among aristocrats who were losing their wealth to increasingly severe confiscations and extortions.

Attempts by a treasury official in the province of Libya early in 238 to raise revenues through false judgments against some landowners provided the spark that would ignite large-scale revolt. After a mob, armed by these nobles, had murdered the offending official and his bodyguards, the now-outlaw landowners proclaimed the governor of the province, the elder Gordian (a man of eighty years) as emperor. When the news reached Rome, the senate quickly embraced the revolt, bestowed the title of Augustus on Gordian (I) and his son Gordian (II) and stripped Maximinus of his honours. Maximinus was wintering in Pannonia when he heard the news. He decided it was time to visit eternal Rome, crush the revolt, and make the senators pay for their treason.

While Maximinus was leading his army to Italy, one of his North African generals met the ill-prepared Gordian II on a Libyan field. It was a massacre.

Pushing and trampling on each other, more were killed by their own side than by the enemy. In the battle Gordian's son and his entourage fell, but, because of the many dead, their bodies could not be brought back for burial, and the son's body was never found.

The swift collapse of the revolt in Libya (the two Gordians had ruled for only 20 or 22 days) did little to dampen the resolve of the senate – anyway, they knew that Maximinus, when he got to Rome, would spare not a one of them. They had staked their bid and now must fight. They named two of their own – Senators Pupienus and Balbinus – as joint emperors. An eminently aristocratic pair but the Roman people disapproved. A violent mob soon filled the entire approach road to the Capitol and demanded that an emperor from Gordian's family should be chosen.

There was a young lad, the son of Gordian's daughter, named after his grandfather. So the emperors fetched the boy, who was found playing at home.... Once the senate had voted him the title of Caesar (he was too young to be made head of state), the people's anger ended and they allowed the emperors to go to the imperial palace.

Meanwhile, Maximinus entered Italy. The first Italian city on his route to Rome was Aquileia, a town-fortress at the head of the Adriatic Sea in the northeast of the country. Bolstered with two military commanders sent by the senate, Aquileia closed its gates to Maximinus.

Maximinus let his troops get bogged down in an interminable siege. As if a god had clouded his mind, he made no effort to break through to Rome with his cavalry. Herodian says that he thought that, if he did not utterly destroy the first city in Italy to oppose him, he could not decently make a triumphant march on Rome. Perhaps. Somehow, he got stuck there. As the army advanced toward the city walls, it cut down and burned all the vines and trees, uprooted everything. Now the countryside was everywhere burnt and devoid of any provisions.

The people of Aquileia fought back vigorously and enthusiastically from the walls ... and the entirely population, including women and children, joined in the resistance from the battlements and turrets.... The Aquileians fired down rocks from the walls and prepared a concoction of pitch and oil mixed with sulphur and bitumen, which they poured into empty jars with long handles. As soon as the army approached the walls, they set fire to the mixture and poured it out, showering it all together like rain on the besiegers. Men tore off their burning breast-plates and other armour because the metal was getting red-hot, and the leather and wooden parts were burning and shrinking. As a result, a great number of soldiers lost their eyesight; or their faces and hands....

Who was leading this intrepid defence?

None other than Rutilius Crispinus, whom we last saw with Severus Alexander in Palmyra , where, as the Roman general in chief, he was entertained by Julius Aurelius Zenobius, Zenobia's father. Crispinus had obviously survived the hellish march into Mesopotamia and made it back to Rome. Now, here he was dashing around the ramparts of Aquileia, urging the people to stay firm, keep up their resistance and not betray the senate and Roman people: "Instead," he cried, "earn yourselves the title of saviours and defenders of all Italy." He not only made a great speech (preserved by Herodian) but had very sensibly imported a large enough stock of food into the city to survive a long siege.

On the other side, expecting a quick victory, the army had not been provisioned properly. Thanks to their own devastation of the land, food was scarce; supplies were breaking down: soldiers were short of everything. The siege wore on. The army became dejected and anger began to grow among Maximinus' own soldiers. In the end, a legion mutinied and, joined by the Praetorian Guards, they murdered Maximinus and his son. Their bodies were thrown out for anyone to desecrate and trample on, before being left to be torn to pieces by dogs and birds. The heads of the ex-Augustus and his Caesar were sent to Rome on pikes.

A bad year for Augusti

Certainly, it was a first among firsts that the single year of 238 AD saw the violent end of no fewer than five of the six emperors + one caesar. The curious thing is that all six emperors were legitimate in the sense that they had been nominated or approved by the Senate. Of course, it was a long time since the Senate actually chose the emperors. They now were almost invariably elevated by one of the armies. When a new Augustus was acclaimed by his troops, the senate wisely hailed the army’s choice; or, when civil wars broke out between rival generals, senators kept their heads down until they could ratify the victor. Pupienus and Balbinus were exceptional, among the last emperors truly raised by the senate. It didn't bring them luck.

Six in one year is a bit much.

The first to go was Gordian II, killed in battle. Hearing of the death of his son, Gordian I then hanged himself with his own purple sash. Next for the chop were Maximinus and his son, Caesar Maximus, killed before the walls of Aquileia. Pupienus and Balbinus were both murdered by the Praetorians in Rome after a reign of 99 days:

The two old men were seized, stripped, and dragged naked from the imperial palace, to the accompaniment of absolutely degrading indignities. After beating and jeering at these senatorial emperors, the Praetorians maltreated them by pulling out their beards and eyebrows and mutilating their bodies. [They] were left exposed out on the road, while the soldiers lifted up Gordian (who held the title of Caesar) and proclaimed him as the emperor, for want of someone else.

So the survivor of this cull of Augusti in 238 was Gordian III. He was now thirteen years old and he owed his elevation first to the urban mob and then the Praetorian Guard. Decidedly infra dig and the senate didn't like it one bit. The faction of the Gordiani had used the enmity between the senate and Praetorians and the senate and the urban plebs to nullify the senatorial revolution. Somehow, the boy-emperor (and his empress mother!) shrugged the senate aside. Pupienus and Balbinus suffered damnatio memoriae , a fate they did not deserve - especially since their own first imperial act had been to deify his grandfather, Gordian I, and uncle, Gordian II. It seems a poor recompense.

Before this had happened, however, the senate had already raised the murdered Severus Alexander to the rank of the gods, and he was granted the honour of a cenotaph in Gaul and a magnificent tomb in Rome. This leads us directly to the Mystery of Monte del Grano , a cliff-hanger that must teeter on the edge a little longer (sorry, I've run out of time).

More Uppity Woman: The 4 Julia's (Part IV) ... the end

Mamaea’s Last Post


Alexander Augustus, may the gods keep you! Persicus maximus, may the gods keep you! Parthicus in truth, Persicus in truth. We behold your trophies, we behold your victories too.

Thus, according to the Roman version of Fox News – the Life of Alexander in Historiae Augustae – the Senate acclaimed the imaginary victories of Severus Alexander. And this was followed, if The Life can be believed, by a triumph in September 233 AD, when Mamaea and her son were briefly back in Rome:

With the greatest glory and accompanied by the senate, the equestrian order, and the whole populace, with the women and children, particularly the wives of the soldiers, crowding about him on every side, he went up on foot to the Palace, while behind him four elephants drew his triumphal chariot. On the following day he gave games in the Circus and spectacles on the stage....

I would take this as the stuff of purest fantasy but for a handful of coins and medallions that vaunt the Emperor’s victories in the east: on one, Alexander is crowned by the goddess of Victory as he tramples on the Tigris and Euphrates; another (pictured left) shows Victory crushing a miniature captive under her shield. Even Mamaea seems to join in the celebration, with coins proclaiming Fortuna Redux (‘Fortune restored’). Given her good sense, I like to think that these coins were issued before 233 – a wish and her prayer, as it were. But I don't know....

No matter. Suspend disbelief, if you like. I’d like to focus instead on what Alexander did immediately after his triumph: in the most unmilitary action imaginable, he “founded an order for [destitute] girls and boys, to be called Mamaeanae and Mamaeani.”

This seemingly innocuous detail stopped me in my tracks.

Not because it’s a post-triumphal let-down. Nor that Alexander probably had nothing to do with it - an emperor is automatically credited with all good deeds done in Rome during his reign (tradition demands it): it was Mamaea, surely, who made the endowments herself. That's hardly surprising. No, what brought me to an abrupt halt is this: charitable institutions for poor children are almost unheard-of in the pagan world. The very words ‘the poor’ is particular to the vocabulary of Christians and Jews: paganism does not have this concept. In a nutshell, it was a very Christian thing to do.

The Poor are always with us.

Rare was the wise man, as Seneca wrote, “who will give a coin to a beggar without dropping it in a contemptuous manner.” Pagans did not give regular alms to the poor or to widows and orphans, but usually abandoned them to their fate without much sign of remorse; and, when they gave up the ghost, their bodies were not buried, but dumped on refuse heaps. Of course, pagan society was not always hard-hearted. Civic-minded rich men (and some women) came to the aid of fellow citizens in times of need, and many undertook public services at their own expense – this was the price of public honour.

Imperial Giving

The imperial Alimenta, which channelled money to poor boys in Italy, is often mistaken for a Roman charity, but that wasn’t really its purpose: although it spread a little relief to some lucky boys, it was a scheme to raise the low birth-rate and produce more citizens. Similarly, when an emperor ‘gave’ a building or an aqueduct or bread & circuses to ‘his’ people, it was meant to reflect his own glory, an act of self-aggrandizement that might have been useful (though often was not). Such aims are far from the Christian ideal of almsgiving out of pity for the disinherited or even the less lofty goal of saving one's soul for the next life – through alms a Christian could redeem a whole lifetime of sins.

In short, pagan benevolence did not run to endowing old people’s homes, orphanages, hospitals and so on – these are institutions that appear only with the Christian epoch.*

So what was Mamaea doing?

Two earlier ‘good emperors’, Antonius Pius and the sainted Marcus Aurelius had made endowments for destitute girls in the names of their wives, Faustina the Elder, who died in 141 AD and was deified, and Faustina the Younger, who joined her in the heavens in 175 AD. So, there was some tradition for ‘good’ Empresses having aided poor girls in Rome.

With two big differences:

1. The earlier endowments were not made by the Empresses themselves but after their deaths.

2. The funds were probably used to dower the lucky Puellae Faustininianae (Faustina’s Girls), the unfortunate daughters of citizens who lacked a patrimony. As a jurist wrote: “it is useful to the state that women should have dowries and so be able to marry” – the tacit agenda being ‘to have lots of children and increase the population’. Thus, these memorials, too, fall within the hoary tradition of civic munificence.

Mamaea, however, was still alive and as active as ever – and her charity was not restricted to the second sex. She was casting a wider net. And this, as far as I know, was unprecedented.

It seems natural to wonder if Mamaea's Girls & Boys reflects in any way her meeting with Origen in Antioch: had those talks with the great Christian teacher made her more sensitive to poverty? For Christians, charity was a moral duty and "the poor" covered anyone who needed alms. Remember that Bishop Eusebius had praised Mamaea as "a religious woman if ever there was one." Was she, in fact, copying Christian practice?

Or was she combatting it?

Did she intend to use her money to fight the Christians with their own weapons – to deny them “the credit they win for such practices,” as Julian the Apostate grumbled more than 100 years later? When he tried to revive the ancient rites, he found that, even then, the pagan priests still neglected and overlooked the poor. They had learnt nothing from the Christian success.

Was Mamaea that much sharper? In the 3rd century, it could still have gone either way. What did she plan for her Boys & Girls - a life as semi-Christians or as pagan religionists? I don't know. Perhaps she didn’t know herself and, now, there was almost no time left.

Make War, Not Love

Having declared victory and left the east, Alexander now had to defend the empire in the west. German tribes, particularly along the Rhine and Danube, had taken advantage of the withdrawal of Roman troops for the eastern war, crossed the rivers and invaded Roman territory.

Reluctantly and sadly (through sheer necessity) Alexander issued the proclamation of a new expedition ... and marched against the Germans.

Mamaea again went with him. Marching northward hastily, the Romans crossed the Rhine on a bridge of boats. In 235, Alexander and Mamaea were in Moguntiacum (Mainz), the capital of Upper Germany. An ambitious offensive campaign was planned.

Either because of his natural docility or cleverly playing for time against just one of the many threats on the northern frontiers, he tried to buy off these barbarians rather than risk the chances of war.

He decided to send a mission to the Germans to discuss peace terms, with a promise to meet all their requirements and saying that he had plenty of money. This was the most effective bargaining counter with the Germans, who were avaricious and always ready to trade peace with the Romans in exchange for gold. But the soldiers bitterly resented this ridiculous waste of time. In their opinion Alexander showed no honourable intention to pursue the war and preferred chariot-racing and a life of ease....

What you see is what you get



In the army there was a man called Maximinus, from one of the semi-barbarous tribes of the interior of Thrace (nowadays Bulgaria): his father may have been a Goth, his mother of the Alani. In any case, he was of lowly origin, perhaps having started life as a shepherd-boy. When he came of age, he was drafted into the army, where, with the help of a bit of luck, he progressed through all the ranks in the army and was given charge of legions and commands over provinces.

As fighting flared up against the Germans, Maximinus was placed in charge of raising and training recruits. These young soldiers were fiercely loyal to Maximinus, whose four decades of harsh military service placed him in stark contrast to the tender, indecisive Alexander. The troops were ready to revolt, and Maximinus was ready to lead them.

... the young men, of whom the greater majority were Pannonians, admired Maximinus' courage and despised Alexander for being under his mother's control and for the fact that business was conducted on the authority and advice of a woman, while he himself presented a picture of negligence and cowardice in his conduct of the war.

Regular readers of my blog can guess what Maximinus did next. Herodian tells us.

The soldiers found the current state of the empire annoying because of the length of Alexander's rule, and unprofitable now that all his munificence had dried up.... To assure his popularity and their enthusiasm, Maximinus doubled their pay [and] promised an enormous bonus of cash and kind.

The mutiny came in early March 235. The end is really rather sad:

Going out on to the parade ground, Alexander mustered his troops and begged them to fight for him and protect the emperor whom they had brought up and under whose rule they have lived for fourteen years without complaint.... Maximinus' army was by now in sight and the young recruits began to call out, urging their fellow soldiers to desert their '[stingy] little sissy" or "their timid little lad tied to his mother's apron strings" and to come over to the side of a man who was brave ... and devoted to a life of military action.

Trembling and terrified out of his wits, Alexander just managed to get back to his tent. There, the reports say, he waited for his executioner, clinging to his mother and weeping and blaming her for his misfortunes.

Start as you mean to go on


Maximinus didn't do the deed himself but sent soldiers who burst into the imperial tent and slaughtered the emperor, his mother and all those thought to be his friends or favourites. Some of them managed to escape or hide for a brief time, but Maximinus soon caught them and killed them all.

Alexander had reached the age of 26½ years and had been emperor for almost precisely half his life. Julia Mamaea was a little less than 55 years old and had been in or near the purple for most of her life.
I'm going to miss her.

With the accession of Maximinus Thrax, the Severan dynasty came to an end.







* My discussion of Christian versus pagan philanthropy is very much indebted to P. Veyne, Bread and Circuses (London 1976) Ch. 1.

The photographs of Maximinus and Julia Mamaea come from the excellent site of Bill Storage & Laura Maish