Temples of the Kitty Cats

If you have been to Rome you have almost certainly seen the archaeological site referred to as "Largo Argentina".  It is in the Campus Marti section of town and sits smack at the intersection of the bus and tram lines.  People waiting for public transit get an inspirational view over an entire city block of ruins.

Ah, and what history there is there.  We have deeds pious and villainous stretching all the way back to the grand days of the Roman Republic.  There are still some serene but vaguely sinister types lurking about the place, but I shall get to the cats a bit later.

It was already known that there were two Republican era temples on the site when urban renewal projects in the 1920s began.  They kept hitting more and more archaeology, to the point that even Mussolini - who seldom let a few old stones stand in the way of his plans - gave up and just dedicated the site as an archeological park.  There ended up being a total of four temples, with the likely dedications being to the "Temple of Today's Fortune", to a goddess named "Feronia", to the "Lares Permanarii" and to either "Juturna" or "Juno Curitis".

Three of the four deities so recognized were water related, and ancient records indicate that the official who supervised the aqueducts had his headquarters here.  Right around the corner stands another structure associated with the free distribution of grain.

Along the western side of the Largo Argentina complex stood the Curia of Pompey, which is where Julius Caesar met his end on the Ides of May in 44 BC.  The presumptive site has been identified in recent years but is not publicly marked.  I suspect they don't want flowers, coins and other memorials tossed onto the site.

In the way of more recent misdeeds, the upper levels of the site contain the ruins of a church built in the 9th century.  It was called Saint Nicolo dei Calcari, and was a parish church for the guys working so hard to turn ancient marble statues and inscriptions into nice new lime by burning it in kilns.  Darn 'em.

A few pictures of Largo Argentina in the spring of 2015.

The site has been bashed about a bit over the millenia.  Fires destroyed the area more than once.  Later buildings were put in on top.  Don't get me going on about those lime kilns.  The fact that it looks this nice is probably due to a combination of factors.  The Campus Marti region was one of the few parts of Rome that was never entirely abandoned.  Its water supply was not dependent on the severed aqueducts so medieval buildings surrounded and to some extent protected the ancient structures. Oh, and recall that if Mussolini didn't like how things looked he just had his guys improve things a bit.

Recent accounts of the "discovery" of the exact site of Caesar's assassination make their case by indicating that a square bit of stone work - presumably the base for a commemorative statue put up by Augustus - were found near the entrance to Pompey's Curia.  This is where the Senate was meeting because the official Senate building had been, well, burned down by and angry mob.  If you like the notion of Caesar falling near the entrance to the building, this would be about the right spot.  In this picture look for the white square this side of the tall tree in roughly the middle of the image.  Now don't go throwing swag down there.

The church of the lime makers has survived the years fairly well.

Ah yes, I promised cats.  Well, if you are the kind of person who enjoys felines and ruins - and you know who you are - this is the place for you.  The entire city of Rome is a sort of unofficial cat sanctuary.  I understand that there is a law that if an area has a certain number of resident cats then they have to be left alone.  The Largo Argentina site is closed to the public apart from the rare tours that are allowed.  The stray cats just settled in.  Eventually a volunteer organization was formed to take care of them.  They get fed, neutered, put up for adoption.  The cats have run of the place while we have to look over the fences:

Hey, I am not a cat lover.  But I do recognize in them a certain inner calmness that serves them well. As I am anticipating a rather stressful week I will - most atypically for me - also feature cats in my Wednesday and Friday posts.

Why we need Pubs

Here we have an important landmark for humanity.

St. Mary's Hospital, London.  Near Paddington Station.  It's importance?  Turn around.

I have managed, well  to accidentally capture the reflection of the red brick building.  That was where Sir Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin! Now, did mold spores from his favorite pub waft across the street to help mankind vanquish disease?  I'm going with probably here.  Yeast and deep thoughts....that's what pubs are all about really.

Secrets of Tiber Island

Welcome back to Tiber Island.  It really does rather look like a ship, don't you think?  For reference that is the main Synagogue of Rome peeking over the trees on the far shore.

There is a modern stone platform around the island, just right for a nice stroll.  You access it by stairs near the bridge you can see above. This is the "new"  Ponte Cestio bridge that leads to the Trastevere side of the river. Built between 62 and 27 BC but it has had some work done in modern times.

After you check out the "ship" at the down stream side of the island it is time to wander a bit.  Here is the other bridge:

This is the more famous bridge, built by a fellow named Fabricus in 62   BC.  Unlike its slightly newer twin it is almost entirely unchanged.  It is also called the "Ponte dei Quattro Capi", or the bridge of the four heads.  This is because it has mounted on it a pair of ancient sculptures that each have four faces.  These are a sort of "double Janus" design that may have been intended to watch over an important four way intersection or alternatively a road and river intersection.  Although now mounted on the bridge they were actually found a short distance inland and their exact relationship to the bridge is speculative.  There used to be four of them but a pair have gone missing over the long years.

If you look up at the medieval buildings on the island you see something odd:

I could be mistaken but I think this is a "garderobe".  Basically an outhouse stuck onto the side of a building with, shall we say a "clean drop" below.  You see these often on castle walls.  Thankfully it appears to have been retrofitted with modern plumbing, but that foliage down below does appear pretty lush.

Heading back up top it is time to take a peek at the upstream end of the island.  This has been the site of a hospital since 1584.  I was a little uncertain as to where I was allowed to walk, but a sign that said "Pronto Succorso" seemed inviting.  I was able to puzzle out that it meant something along the lines of "Urgent Care".

Out back you find various jumbled up archeological remains.  Essentially their garden wall and the area supporting their trash bins are made of old Roman stuff.

And shockingly, back there among the odds and ends I found this:

This is a dedication stone to Jupiter Dolichenus.  This was an Eastern cult, originating in Turkey and seemingly related to Baal.  As they tended to do, the Romans shrugged, let people go on worshiping Dolichenus but added Jupiter to the name.  The Romans were certainly not monotheists but the concept of diverse names for different aspects of the same deity seems to me to be tiptoeing in that direction.

A few years back the excavators at Vindolanda were very excited to unearth an altar to Dolichenus. This god was often associated with the Roman military and his worship was often centered in military communities.  The stone above does not have all the classic features of an altar - it should have Dolichenus astride a bull for instance - but the slots in the top do make me wonder if there was a decorated screen on the top of it at some point.  And there is a little bit of sculpture work tacked onto the modern brick plinth that sort of looks like Dolichenus in a cap.  Perhaps a fragment of the altar iconography?

Sorry fellow Vindo excavators, in Rome it seems Dolichenus altars are no great shakes.  Just go looking out back by the bins.

As to a tentative interpretation of the inscriptions:  The upper one is rather long, but to summarize it says approximately:

IOM Dolicheno (Jupiter Optimus Maximus Dolichenus) for the welfare of the Emperor Septimius Severus, Caesar (Crown Prince) Caracalla, Julia Domna Augusta and the whole of the 'divine' household* dedicated by Marcus Valerius Valentinus an optio in the Praetorian Fleet at Ravenna. He did this himself with the soldiers of the fleet in the year of the two consuls:

AD196

C. Domitius Dexter II

L. Valerius Messalla Thrasea Priscus

The side reads: IUSSO CAECILIUSERVIALLI NO COL III KIV LIAS

This shakes out to be:  "Placed under the orders of Caecilius Servilianus 3 days before the Kalends of July"**

As best I can determine this monument was unearthed during expansion work on the hospital in the 1930s.  More recent excavations have been better documented.  There is fabulous stuff in the storage areas under the hospital, alas not open to view.

I liked Tiber Island. It was right on the walking route from our lodgings on into town.  We crossed the ancient bridges every day.  It is a peculiar place.  Plenty of tourists, sure, but they are just streaming across it going to other places.  Step off the beaten path and it is a quiet refuge.  Locals are out for walks or fishing off the banks.  On the upstream end of the island I found a final enigma. Several messages similar to this, weighted down by rocks so that they would not blow away.  The translation here is, approximately:

"The waters surrounded  me.  The abyss swallowed me.  The weeds were twisted everywhere"

Kind of a creepy message actually.  But on a brilliant warm spring day in the Eternal City it just seemed to be another oddity on an island full of such.

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*AD 196 was early enough that Caracalla's brother Geta does not get a mention.  They would later have an Imperial level falling out!

**Thanks to Catherine Jarvis for help with the inscriptions! Catherine@Hands-on-Latin.com

Exploring Tiber Island

There are some implausible "origin" stories regarding Isola Tiber, the only island within the boundaries of Rome.  One tale says that when the Romans drove out their last king they took all the grain from his estates and chucked it into the river, where it formed an island.  Eh, probably not.  The first thing revolutionary mobs generally do is confiscate wealth, not throw it away.

A more amusing if only slightly less believable story involves ships and snakes.

The year was 292 BC. A plague was festering in the city.  It was decided that Rome needed a temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing.  A ship was dispatched to Epidaurus where this cult had its main temple.  A statue of the god was obtained and for good measure a large snake - sacred to Aesculapius - was taken on board.

On arrival in Rome there was a debate as to where the new temple should be established.  The decision was finally made by the snake, who slithered off the ship, swam the narrow channel to Tiber Island and curled up in a comfy spot.  This became the site of the Temple to Aesculapius, and the start of the 23 century long association of the island with the healing arts.  Practically speaking it also made sense to keep sick people on an island with limited access, for quarantine reasons for instance.

Because the island is roughly shaped like a ship the legend became the substance.  Here is the downstream side of Tiber Island with the original Roman stonework reproducing the end of a trireme!

I like the orange life preservers up above.  Helpful hint, don't try to swim in the Tiber. It looks nasty and the current would pull you under long before help could arrive.  If you look closely at the ship-shape above you will see....

The serpent of Aesculapius, in the form of a caduceus, then as now symbol of the healing arts.

The portico outside the temple seems to have served as a place to care for the sick, a function that continued after the repudiation of paganism in the late Empire. In the 10th century a Christian Church was build on the site, initially dedicated to St. Adalbert of Prague.  In 1180 it was rededicated and renamed after receiving some more upscale relics, those of St. Bartholomew the Apostle.  Because said relics include a rather large piece of the saint's skin, the hospital that continued on at the site developed something of a reputation in the medieval era as being especially adept at healing maladies of this sort.  In the 12th century English pilgrim named Rahere fell ill when in Rome, and based on his recovery at St. Bartholomew's returned to England and founded the still extant Hospital of the same name in London.

The basilica of St. Bartholomew has been damaged and repaired quite a few times in its long history, but traces of the earlier ages persist. Many of the marble columns are reused from Roman times, presumably having served in the Temple.  And on the steps leading up to the main altar is a 10th century well head.  It is said to be on the site of the spring that existed in the Temple of Aesculapius. Also to mark the spot where the snake curled up.  I looked down in there and did not see him, but those metal bars over the top must be there for some reason...

The themes of holiness and health still exist today, the northern half of the island is still an active hospital.  One day when we walked past a little procession came out of its doors.  Darkly dressed morticians carried a casket.  A doctor saw them to the door.  A priest walked alongside.  Japanese tourists snapped pictures.

There is some debate as to how much the island was actually engineered to look like the ship of legend.  There was probably a ship's prow at the upstream end.  But the small obelisk that once stood in front of the Temple probably was not intended to represent a mast.  The surviving fragments of the obelisk suggest it may have been a late Roman imitation rather than an Egyptian original.

The obelisk broke and fell in the Middle ages.  It was replaced by a simple column, possibly from the temple,  with a cross atop it.  Every year on August 24th a list would be posted on this colonna infama of all the local citizens who had not fulfilled their obligation to attend Mass and give confession at least once a year.

In 1867 this tradition came to an end when someone ran into the column with a carriage and knocked it down.  It was replaced with the current monument featuring four saints each looking in a different direction.  Note the sturdy protective stonework at the base.  No chances are being taken on one of the infrequent motorists on the island getting frisky.

This "looking all ways" monument has a famous counterpart not far away.  Next time we will pay a visit and will look into some of the odd corners of the Island, places that don't get many visitors.

And advance warning to my fellow Vindolanda excavators.......prepare for a shock.

Addendum.  A well done survey of the Tiber Island sites can be found here.  The author is conversant with a variety of source material that is not widely available and is of course mostly in Italian.

Caves of Brownsville - A peek inside

Today we continue our look at the series of caves that once stood behind the main street of Brownsville, Minnesota. I went down on a marvelous early spring day after getting an invite from the local historical society who now own the two caves we will visit today.

The entrances are similar and right next to each other, so I will just show one of them.  Note the later cement additions.  It is possible that the backs of the buildings were in fact a few feet away from the cliff face.  I did not see much evidence of any modification of the cliff face to accept beams or metal pegs.

On the other hand, the foundation stones seen up above may have been the back wall of the building - both of these appear to have been pre Civil War hotels - and the caves may have been directly accessed through the ground floor.  Note also that the doorway here is too narrow to be practical as a brewery cave.

This cave has a rectangular shape and a slightly arched roof.  The latter had a thin coat of plaster on it but this has fallen off in places.  The plaster would have reduced the fall of sand and debris from the roof.  You could tolerate this with beer kegs perhaps.  But if the hotel kept produce, meat, wine etc in cold storage those might be commodities less tolerant of a little grit.

The other cave was smaller and somewhat crudely made.  The historical society has not yet cleaned out all the old stuff, hence the beauty parlor chair in the foreground!  Incidentally, this part of Minnesota is known for its orchards and these caves were used for apple storage until fairly recently.

It was fun to spend a bit of time investigating the caves in detail.  I am always interested in clues as to how these caves were made and why they had certain design features.   Consider the vent holes that most caves have, whether they stored beer or other temperature sensitive commodities.  The vents can sometimes extend upwards a very great distance but are invariably seen to be perfectly round. Nobody could shinny up a chimney that narrow while carving such a perfect hole.  I have long suspected that some sort of auger system must be used, basically a big drill bit to which one could add extra segments as the boring progressed.  And after years of search I finally found evidence.

Note the central divot and the circular grooves further out?  This looks like spot where the vent driller was placed, turned a few times and then moved further back in the cave where a shaft was then drilled to the surface.

Here is another interesting feature, one that appears to be specific to non brewery caves:

Nicely cut ledges for setting goods on.  I have seen something a bit similar in the Wolf brewery caves in Stillwater, but in general this sort of thing would be useless when the main goal was keg storage.

As to how the caves were formed, they appear to have just been chiseled out with pick axes.  St. Peter sandstone is easy to work with when fresh.  After exposure to air it firms up rock solid. This next picture shows pick axe marks.  Note that they are small and round near the ceiling, then turn into longer and angled grooves further down.  That is the reality of how one would swing a pick axe.  Near the ceiling you have no room for a downward swing.  I am surprised that the lower marks do not show a decided "right hander" orientation.

I close with a mystery.  In some caves you see  mysterious holes drilled into the sides of the cave walls.  Some are solo, others as below are in lines.  A single hole here and there might be a test drilling to see that the stone is solid. But an array of them is odd.  I have no compelling theory for it. Not yet anyway.

These caves are locked but the local historical society folks are very friendly.  If you are interested in this and in other history of this scenic part of the world I suggest you get in touch with them.

The Seven Caves of Brownsville (Minnesota)

Brownsville is a pretty little community.  It is in far southeastern Minnesota right along the Mississippi.  Of course it got its start early, back when steamboats were the main method of transportation.  In the 1850s it had a busy main street with all the necessities of 19th century life...saloons, hotels, stores, offices.

But prosperity went elsewhere and the boom was over by the 1870s.  Oh, folks still lived there but it became a sleepier place.  Eventually the main street went from a narrow dirt road to a four lane highway, taking out all that was left of Old Brownsville.  But because the town was tucked in so tightly to the river bluffs, the original settlers had dug a series of caves.  These are the storage cellars of Pre-Civil War Brownsville.  I am numbering them from north to south with my comments on each:

Cave One.  A narrow doorway and fairly high up in the cliff.  This seems to have been an ice storage facility.  This is interesting, as it suggests that the tunnel goes quite a ways back into the cliff.  You don't dig a cave to store a few trays of ice cubes.  

I have seen, and will attempt to add on, a picture of this door with a ramp at its bottom and with two guys sliding a large block of ice down it.

Cave Two we have seen in our earlier visit.  As you can see in the second photo it has all the features of a beer storage cave.  In fact I think that's what it was.  The spot corresponds to the location of a hotel owned by a man named Fred Gluck (great name, makes you think of the sound of pouring beer!). Gluck was also a partner in one of the two breweries in Brownsville, so it would make sense for him to store some of the "product" here close to where it would be consumed.

Cave Three looks like an "oops".  Somebody started digging and just quit.  Did the building project go belly up or did they hit some hard rock?

Cave Four has the look of a natural cave that has been expanded some.  It lacks the straight edges and gently arched top of the other caves.

Cave Five is another of the classic "brewery cave" type.  And it might be one.  One of the breweries in Brownsville claimed to have excavated a 100 foot long cave if a 1866 newspaper article is not just the boomerism of 19th century civic pride.  Cave Two only goes back 30 or 40 feet tops. Another possibility would have this the cave from the earliest brewery in town, one run by a man named Knoblauch.  It only lasted a few years in the early 1850s, and its location is unknown.  Of course a hotel or grocer might also find use for a nice cave.

Below are Caves Six and Seven.  Come back next time for a look inside!

Meta Sudans - And other Roman Turning Points

The ancient monument called "Meta Sudans" fooled me.  I assumed when I first heard of it that its name was geographic in origin.  There is of course a country called Sudan, and although the Romans would have called it something else (Nubia? Aetheopia?) it made a certain kind of sense.  Romans were big on geographic bragging, witness the nicknames given to various Imperial worthies...Germanicus, Brittanicus etc.  But in fact the name means something else entirely.  Here is an artist's impression of what the Meta Sudans would have looked like in Imperial times. (image courtesy of Wikimedia, originally by "Claushalls").  In the background is the Arch of Constantine.

This is probably an accurate depiction, as several similar structures are known from around the Empire including one in Algeria that is more or less intact.

The Meta Sudans dates to the 1st Century AD.  As seen above it was covered in nice marble, all stripped off for other uses after the Fall of Rome.  In this 1858 view, with the Colosseum in the background, it is a sad little thing, just the remnant of the original brick core.

What the name actually meant, and what finally happened to the Meta Sudans are related stories.

In Latin meta means a destination or a turning point.  We keep this sense in a few modern words such as metamorphosis. And sudans, oddly, means sweating.  Literally the Meta Sudans was a "turning point that sweats".  In fact it is felt to have been a fountain but not one that shoots water upwards. The water probably flowed down the sides like a modern day "water feature" used in decor.

The part about it being a turning point is because that is where Roman Triumphs, the victory parades they held from time to time, took a turn.  A meta was also the somewhat pyramidal shaped markers on the "spina" of a Roman circus that indicated a turn.

We tend to regard Mussolini as a B level villain in the history of the 20th century.  He caused a great deal of death and destruction but certainly not in the class of Hitler or Stalin.  But when it came to archaeological misdeeds his legacy is abysmal.  He wanted to have modern day Triumphs in which his showy but ultimately mediocre military could do what they did best, march around in swell uniforms. (By the way, with current international tensions running high the entire vicinity of the Colosseum/Meta Sudans is still under the watchful eyes of well accoutered soldiers of uncertain effectiveness!)

So that military parades could go unimpeded through the Arch of Constantine and make a nice smart turn, he had the remains of the Meta Sudans bulldozed in 1936.  Later revisions of the area have shown the foundations of the monument.

Here are the sad remains of the Meta Sudans in 2015.  Nothing more than a wide circle of stone foundation in a grassy field between the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine.  I suspect that tens of thousands of people walk past it on an average day, and that you could count on one hand the number of visitors who recognize it.

There were actually two other monuments in Rome called "meta".  One still exists. Neither name had any accuracy.

Between Hadrian's tomb and the Circus of Nero (now St. Peter's Square) there was a pyramid shaped structure that was called the Meta Romuli.  Here is a view by Pirro Ligorio from 1561. It appears to show a lot of things that he could not have actually seen by that date, but is a nice representation. Note the depiction of actual metas at the ends of the spina inside the circus.

It was probably a tomb.  The notion that Romulus was buried there is of course nonsense.  This structure has vanished without a trace but a quite similar one, the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius was built into the Aurelian Walls and has survived many historic misfortunes in good shape.  The Pyramid of Cestius was sometimes called the Meta Remi, the supposed place where Romulus'brother Remus was interred.  Again with no basis in history whatsoever.

Before leaving the, well, "meta-analysis" of the word Meta, I have to show one final image.  When we visited the marvelous Roman site of Ostia we walked around in the back sections.  We had them pretty much to ourselves, just the ruins, my wife and I, a few fellow eccentrics and lots of lizards. We walked right into a former Roman mill, where donkeys patiently turned millstones grinding grain for the bakeries.  Check this out:

The mills were made of hard volcanic stone, so as to reduce the amount of tooth damaging grit in the daily diet.  The upper part of the mill was an hourglass shaped stone with slots for the handles.  These were then slowly rotated over the lower part of the mill....conical shaped stones called "metas"!
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Etymology side note.  The country Sudan gets its name from an Arabic phrase, "Bilad-al-sudan" which means literally "country of the blacks".  Having noted that the Italian word for south is "sud" I had speculated on a Latin origin.  Alas, in Latin south is "australi" the source naturally of Australia! Languages tend to swirl around and imitate each other over time.  Was "sud" a carry over from the Saracen invaders of early medieval Italy?