The Reach of Rome: A Journey Through the Lands of the Ancient Empire, Following a Coin

431 Pages·2013·1.99 MB·English

by  Conti

Also by Alberto Angela
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANCIENT ROME

’
INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR ALBERTO ANGELA S
A Day in the Life of the Roman Empire
“Angela’s rigorous research and populist style, aided by Conti’s seamless
translation, should fascinate casual readers as well as dedicated
Italophiles.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“A cinematic tour through the apartments and streets of ancient Rome.”
—Bookslut
“Makes an important but often complicated subject fascinating and
accessible.… He transforms his book into a kind of three-dimensional set
in which the reader strolls, visiting homes, markets, open air schools,
baths, and even public latrines.”
—Il Giornale
“In this scrupulous portrait of ancient Rome, Alberto Angela breathes life
into history’s intimate aspects, paying homage to the history made not
by great figures but by individuals, those citizens of Rome whose daily
habits and energies contributed to the grandeur and power of the Roman
Empire.”
—Agora Magazine
“One discovers a wealth of details about the curious habits of ancient
Romans, from their recipes to their tastes in interior design, from life
in … the giant Roman housing projects, to the shocking slave markets.”
—Corriere della Sera
First published in hardcover in the United States of America in 2013 by Rizzoli Ex Libris,
An imprint of Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
300 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010
www.rizzoliusa.com
This ebook edition © 2013 by Alberto Angela
Translation © 2013 by Gregory Conti First published in Italy as Impero: Viaggio Nell’Impero di
Roma Seguendo Una Moneta
© 2010 by Alberto Angela
© 2010 Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana, Roma
© Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the
publishers.
eISBN: 978-0-84784141-7
v3.1
To Monica, Riccardo, Edoardo, and Alessandro
Because my most beautiful journey is the one
I make each day in your eyes
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
ROME ~ Where It All Begins
LONDON ~ Roman Inventions
PARIS ~ When It Was Smaller than Pompeii
TRIER ~ Making the Nectar of the Gods
BEYOND THE RHINE ~ Battling the Barbarians
MILAN ~ Women’s Liberation
REGGIO EMILIA ~ Humor, Seduction, and Adultery
RIMINI ~ A Delicate Operation
THE TIBER ~ Coming into Rome by Water
ROME ~ The Center of the World
CIRCUS MAXIMUS ~ The Secrets of Ben Hur
OSTIA ~ The Real Tower of Babel
SPAIN ~ Rome’s Gold
PROVENCE ~ Beware of Brigands
BAIA ~ Luxury and Licentiousness
THE MEDITERRANEAN ~ Adventure on the Sea
AFRICA ~ An Empire Without Racism
EGYPT ~ Tourists of the Classical World
INDIA ~ Beyond the Borders of the Empire
MESOPOTAMIA ~ An Encounter with Emperor Trajan
EPHESUS ~ Marble for the Empire
BACK TO THE ETERNAL CITY ~ A Journey Through Time
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Preface
Take a look at a map of the Roman Empire at the height of its territorial
expansion. What strikes you most is how vast it is. It stretches from
Scotland to Kuwait, from Portugal to Armenia.
What was is like to live in this world? What kind of people would we
have met in its cities? How were the Romans able to create such a great
empire, uniting peoples and places that were so diverse? The aim of this
book is to take you on a journey through the Roman lands to find the
answers to these questions.
Perhaps you are reading this after having read my previous book on
Rome, A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: an hour-by-hour exploration of
daily life in the capital city. I had imagined that typical day as being a
Tuesday during the reign of the emperor Trajan.
Now imagine that you are waking up the following day, a Wednesday,
and that you are about to leave on a journey that will take you through
the entire empire. A journey where you will breathe the atmosphere of
exotic places, the smells in the alleyways of Alexandria, Egypt, the
fragrances used by the noblewomen strolling on the streets of Milan;
where you will hear the sound of hammers and chisels at work in a
stonecutter’s shop in Athens; and where you will see the painted shields
of legionnaires on the march in Germany and the painted bodies of the
barbarians on the empire’s northern border in Scotland.
When I was preparing to write this book, I wondered what kind of
story line I could use to guide us on a journey like this through the
Roman Empire.
I thought of a coin. A sestertius (or sesterce), to be exact. In fact, by
following the peregrinations of a coin as it continually changes hands, it
is possible, in theory, to reach any point in the empire within the span of
a few years (even as few as three). And, even more important, by
following the people who take turns possessing the coin, we can discover
their faces, their experiences, the world around them, their homes, their
ways of life, their customs and habits.
So we will pass from the hands of a legionnaire into those of a
member of the landed nobility; from the hands of a slave to the hands of
a surgeon trying, by way of a most delicate operation, to save the life of
a baby boy; from a wealthy trader in garum (the famous sauce so loved
by the ancient Romans) to a prostitute; from a singer, at risk of dying in
a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, to a sailor, all the way up to the
emperor. And lots of others.
Obviously, our journey will be imaginary, but nevertheless it is totally
plausible. The people you will meet are, with few exceptions, people
who actually lived in that same period and almost always in the same
places. Their names, occupations, and personal details are real, the fruit
of a long labor of research using tombstones, inscriptions, and ancient
texts. We even know what many of our characters looked like, thanks to
the so-called Fayum portraits, an extraordinary collection of paintings
found in Egypt by archaeologists and dating back to the first centuries
after Christ, to the very same period in which our journey takes place.
They are portraits of ordinary people that would be hung on the walls in
the subjects’ homes and then applied, after their deaths, to their
mummies. Several of the characters in this book are directly inspired by
them.
And so, almost by magic, on the streets of a city, in the back alleys of
a port, on the deck of a ship, we will come upon their ancient, but no
less familiar, faces. And the spark shining in their eyes will illuminate
our view of a little piece of the culture and daily life of their era.
In the same way, the dialogue that you’ll hear pronounced by some of
our ancient Romans is almost always “original,” taken from famous
works written by Latin writers such as Martial, Juvenal, or Ovid.
My intention has been to provide as realistic an idea as possible of the
era, its people, and its places. If, for example, during Trajan’s reign the
North African city of Leptis Magna still didn’t have the great baths built
just a few years later by Hadrian, then you won’t see them as you follow
the sestertius on your tour of the city.
At times, the writing style will be very much like fiction, but every
place, every climate, every monument, every landscape that you’ll
discover during your reading has been carefully documented in ancient
sources and archaeological studies so as to be described in the book as it
was seen and experienced by the ancient Romans. If there are any errors
in this regard, I ask my readers to accept my apologies.
What I hope to do in these pages, in fact, is to help readers immerse
themselves in the reality of daily life in the ancient world. And I want to
present lovers of history and archaeology with the tidbits and sensations
that are not usually described in books, like the smell of the crowd
gathered to watch the chariot races in the Circus Maximus or the
arabesques of light projected by the latticework of the windows.
Given that we cannot know everything exactly as it happened during
the few years of our journey (which concludes in 117 ), it has been
CE
necessary in some very rare cases to make adjustments. At times, an
incident may have actually happened in an era slightly earlier or later
than the moment in which I’ve placed it, but even in those cases it is
completely plausible that the incident could have happened during our
journey.
I have drawn on a variety of sources. First among them are the ancient
authors. Then come the archaeologists, who in many cases have
recounted their discoveries to me personally. Then, the scholars whose
studies and research have provided us with extremely rich descriptions
and interpretations of life at the time. It is not possible to list them all
here but I will cite one of them as a representative of them all: Professor
Lionel Casson, a great student of journeys.
In this behind-the-scenes view of the Roman Empire, you will see that
the world of the ancient Romans, at its core, was quite similar to our
own. They were the ones who brought about the first instance of
globalization in human history: throughout the empire, payments were
made in a single currency; there was one official language (Latin, joined
by Greek in the eastern empire); nearly everyone knew how to read,
write, and do arithmetic; there was a single, universally recognized body
of laws; and goods circulated freely throughout the empire. You could sit
in a tavern in Alexandria or London or Rome and order a glass of the
wine that was being sipped in Gaul or dress your salad with olive oil that
came from Spain. At the clothing store across the street you could buy a
tunic made from linen grown in Egypt and weaved in Rome (a bit like
what happens with T-shirts today). On the road, you might come across