Great Names in History

The last people to leave the town of Segóbriga had to pack up in a hurry and head for the fortified town of Uclés, eight miles away. There was no time to lose because the Moors were coming. The Moors would kill or enslave them all. The last anyone knew, the Arab army had taken Toledo itself and if Tariq, its commander, wanted to he could be in Segóbriga in a day.

Luckily for these last Segobrigenses the Moors had better things to do, better towns to attack and pillage. The old Roman town of Segóbriga was nothing anymore—just a hill full of unintelligible marble ruins. People now lived on the flat ground below the hill and just let the old town fill up with thistles and mud. No one had lived there for two hundred years and earth had filled the old marble rooms and covered or half-covered the baths and the temples. Shepherds brought their sheep there, children used it as a playground. It was full of rabbits. The little collection of huts where people lived now was of no interest to invaders.

What would bring the Moors to Segóbriga was the Christian basilica three hundred yards from its walls. That they would want to destroy. It was the seat of a diocese and the tomb of several of its bishops. There were no cathedrals in those days—where would the money to build them come from?—but this basilica was a beautiful temple, more splendid than any of the churches around. Segóbriga in the old days had been a showcase of fine marble buildings and there was a long tradition of good stonework. The pillars in the basilica, the capitals and other stone adornments, were carved with particular skill.

The bishop—call him Sefronius—was the leader of the little community. There were no civil authorities, no police force, no protection. The Christian King’s army had been annihilated at Guadalete a few weeks after the Arabs crossed over from Morocco. There was no one to defend the Segobrigenses and they huddled around the old bishop and prayed before setting out.

Sefronius came from an old Visigoth family. The Visigoths were the nobles of those times, not the native Spaniards. Two hundred and fifty years earlier they had come into Spain with fire and sword just like the Moors now, and had become its leaders. They were still the leaders in all the communities.

He ordered the people to take down the brass lamps and to hide the crucifix that hung above the altar. But there was no time to consider how to save things like the frescoes or the beautiful filigree carvings on the pillars and the altar.

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When the Moors galloped into Segobriga a few days later, they headed straight for the basilica and started smashing everything in sight. When they had finished, the building was just a shell. Their leader told them not to burn it down, in case he got orders to make a mosque of it. That was sometimes done. But he got no such orders and so the Moors used some of its good stones to build a watchtower on the acropolis of the old town.

Here is the floor plan of the basilica (46 meters long) as drawn from its ruins in about 1800 by a priest who was an amateur archaeologist.

He found at least four bishops’ tombs and copied the epitaph of this one.

The bishop was Sefronius, who died in 580. The epitaph speaks of “that enemy Death who snatched Sefronius from his people.” This tombstone is on display at the site of the basilica now in Segóbriga.

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Excavators slowly unearthed the mysterious mansion and the basilica of Carranque, Spain. Meanwhile, Dimas Fernandez-Galiano, the head archaeologist, worked in the National Library digging up information on Maternus Cynegius, its possible owner. He found some juicy facts.

In the Consularia Constantinopolitana, a kind of almanaque of imperial events, there was an obituary of Maternus Cynegius, Theodosius’ General Prefect. “He restored to all the provinces, affected by long years of ruin, their pristine state and travelled as far as Egypt, where he destroyed the idols of all the towns and cities. And it was from there, amid the general grief of the people that his body was brought to this city [Constantinople] and buried in the Church of the Apostles on the nineteenth of March, 388. After a year his bereaved widow Acantia disenterred his remains and took them on foot to Spain.”

The Church of the Apostles! What an honor! Only emperors were buried there. Why did his wife have him removed from such a prestigious grave? Why did she take him back to Spain? And where in Spain?

Dimas checked other sources. Libanius, a great enemy of Maternus, complained in his Pro Templis about his cruelty and lack of foresight in destroying the pagan temples of Egypt. “Cynegius was a slave to his terrible wife Acantia,” said Libanius. “She was a religious fanatic, a friend of radical monks. And she put her husband up to much of the evil that he did.” He hates Cynegius: “He was hostile to the very country where he was born….”

Maternus Cynegius was born in the Orient? He wasn’t a Spaniard? Then why did his wife go to the trouble—and some trouble! —of disenterring his body from the greatest tomb imaginable, and of carrying it thousands of miles “on foot” to Spain?

Dimas was worried. This was a real setback for his Maternus Cynegius theory. If Theodosius’ Prefect Maternus Cynegius wasn’t born in Spain and died in Syria, then he couldn’t be the owner of the villa in Carranque. There would be no reason for him to have anything to do with Spain.

He left the library reading room and went down to the cafeteria to mull everything over. He couldn’t get the woman out of his mind—Acantia, the wife and religious fanatic….. Suddenly he had an idea: what if she were Spanish? What if after her husband’s death Acantia decided to leave the Orient which she perhaps hated as much as it hated her, and go back to good old Spain, along with her dead husband. To hell with the East and all its Byzantine hypocrisy!

Next he remembered the bedroom portrait of a lady. The mosaic on the bedroom floor of the villa in Carranque had as its center the picture of a woman. Could that have been Acantia?

At the entrance to the room, like a kind of welcome mat, were the words: Enjoy this room, Maternus. Could the entire mansion have been a gift from Acantia?

Meanwhile the excavators kept handing Dimas their puzzling findings. Take this one: The mansion was built on top of an older, much more modest, villa. It was constructed all at once according to one clear general plan, without regard to expense. There were mosaic floors in all the rooms, most of them with pictures of mythological scenes. At least two different teams of foreign craftsmen had worked at the same time to lay them. There was running water and a heating system (hypocaustum) for several of the rooms; a fountain with the beautiful image of Oceanus; a patio; an octagonal triclinium or dining room with heated walls and a high dome; servants’ quarters. The furniture was imported from the East. BUT THE HOUSE WAS NEVER INHABITED.

And it was becoming more and more obvious as the digging went on that the huge basilica, just four hundred yards away, was built at the same time as the mansion—AND AS PART OF THE SAME GENERAL PLAN.
The basilica was built solidly on great granite foundation stones. The walls were covered with costly marble imported from Asia Minor. A long colonnade led up to the door of the basilica and the columns bore inscriptions from Emperor Theodosius’ own Eastern quarries in Egypt and Greece.
The church was surrounded with graves, beginning in late Roman times. Burial seems to have been its purpose. It was a good guess that the whole complex was conceived as a mausoleum/cemetery for some great personage or saint. Who? Maternus Cynegius?

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This is the tower of the Castle of Oreja.

It can’t have long. Already in the eighteenth century a traveller wrote in his journal: “… any day now it will collapse.” The cracks in the walls are big enough to put your arm in. And after a good rain whole shoulders of the great gypsum cliffs come crashing down. One that fell some years ago shaved away the very ground in front of the tower, so that just left of the main door—watch your step as you look inside the tower!—there is a drop of two hundred feet.

Oreja is nothing special. There are more than a thousand ruined castles and fortresses in Spain. Many like Oreja are now out in the middle of nowhere because the roads they guarded are no longer used.
Oreja watches over a ford of the Tagus River. She has been guarding the ford for well over 2000 years. The Romans called her Aurelia. There must have been at least a watchtower on the cliffs in ancient times.

The present tower that is ready to fall is all that is left of a huge complex of defense works built by both Moors and Christians. There were fierce battles here and at the foot of the cliff, in the river valley. The Moors took the castle away from the Christians in 1113; and the Christians didn’t get it back until 1139. King Alfonso VII sieged Oreja with a huge army but still it took him more than nine months to force the Moorish defenders to surrender the castle. Afterwards he handed it over to the Knights of Santiago (St. James) to defend for him.

That’s one of the famous battles Oreja saw, and that one is fact. But there is another one that would make Oreja more famous if anyone could be sure it happened here. Both Livy and Polybius mention it. Somewhere on the Tagus about where Oreja is Hannibal defeated a big army of native Iberians—Olcades and Carpetani—before he started off with his troops and his elephants for Rome. He made the enemy army cross the river to come after him and then cut them down with his cavalry while they were swimming. “It was certainly here at the foot of the castle,” said a nineteenth century writer. “For years farmers have been finding in the fields and on the banks of the river old battle detritus, spearheads, clay sling pellets, even a Carthaginian helmet and an old sword.”

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Dimas Fernandez-Galiano, the head archaeologist, had a theory. The luxurious Roman villa he was excavating near Madrid had belonged to Maternus Cynegius, the right-hand man of the emperor Theodosius.
A bit far-fetched, no?

Well, to a rich man named Maternus it had certainly belonged.
The floors of the villa were all covered with mosaics. One of them had this writing on it—the words formed with colored marble tessels:
Ex Oficinam M………Pincit Hirinius…Utere Felix Materne Hunc Cubiculum.

“What does it say, Professor?” asked Dimas’ student, who was more curious to know than ashamed of his Latin. He had had three years of Latin in college but didn’t understand much.
“That the mosaic was made in the shop of somebody whose name begins with an M; and that the painting it was copied from was by Hirinius. All that might help us find out a few things but it’s the rest of the inscription I like.”
“It’s not obscene, is it, Professor?” The little brat looked to see if his classmate had heard the joke. “Something about the maternal uterus and the little cubicle.”

Dimas was a good guy and just laughed. “You need just a little more Latin study, my boy. No—it has nothing to do with the maternal uterus: it is vocative form of the name of the owner of the house: Maternus. It says: ‘I hope you enjoy this room, Maternus’—it is addressed to him. Judging by the location of the room, its size, and the subject of the mosaics on the floor, this is the master bedroom of the villa. This is Maternus’s bedroom.”
“And those are his pin-ups on the floor. Pretty cool.”

The mosaic pictures were ambitious—too much so for the skill of the craftsman who had copied them. In the center was the portrait of the lady of the manor, with love scenes from Latin and Greek mythology in bright colors all around her like planets around the sun.

“Do you know any famous Maternuses?”

“Just one,” said Dimas. “The relative and right-hand man of the Emperor Theodosius, who was a Spaniard. His hometown was Coca, just 80 miles upriver from here.
“When did he live?”
“Late fourth century. Theodosius was the last emperor of the whole Empire: after him it broke in two. He himself spent most of his life in Constantinople, fighting pagans. And so did Maternus, of course.”
“Do you think this could be that Maternus?”
“It’s a hypothesis,” said Dimas, with a sigh. “It will have to stand a hell of a lot of testing. It is suspect that we know only a few names of people from those times and one of them is Maternus and now that we find a mansion built for a Maternus, it just has to be the guy we know. On the other hand, who else but a rich and powerful man could afford a place like this? Those were hard times. Spain itself was relatively peaceful—the barbarians hadn’t come storming through yet—but it was already feudal. There was no money around. There were only a few rich men and their estates. There might have been plenty of Maternuses, of course. Maybe ours had a relative with the same name.”

But Dimas kept reading up on our Maternus. And the more he dug, the better things looked for his theory. The mythological scenes on the mosaics were clearly in the childish style of the fourth century, similar to mosaics from the same time in northern Africa.

Then there were the bits and pieces of imported furniture that turned up—imported from the East. Chair and table feet in porphyry marble, carved to look like eagle claws and lions’ paws. The latest coin found belonged to the fourth century too. Then there were delicate pieces of jewelry in filigrano, impossible to get here in Hispania at the time.

But the strongest support came from the ruins of other buildings found near the mansion; and one of them was as if conjured up to support Dimas’s dreamy theory: there was a giant basilica four hundred yards from the house, with a ground plan like those of basilicas in the East! And it was built with rare marbles from Turkey and Egypt and Asia Minor. And there was a wonderful colonnade leading up to the temple with pillars of marble inscribed with the names of the Emperor’s quarries in Turkey: the Emperor Theodosius.

See  A Roman Villa (Part 2) 

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On their tombstones, where we write R.I.P. (Requiescat In Pace), Romans wrote

S.T.T.L. (Sit Tibi Terra Levis).

It sounds pitiful. It means: May the earth lie lightly upon you. Was that the most they could hope for, the best they could wish? Was there no consolation for the grieving family and friends?

They thought you DID go somewhere when you died; or rather, your soul made a trip. An old ferryman named Charon took you aboard his boat and rowed you on a river called the Styx to the Underworld, to a kingdom ruled by a god named Hades.

Homer, the greatest Greek poet, describes Hades’ kingdom. Ulysses stumbled onto it while he was still alive when his ship was blown off-course. It is a place where the sun doesn’t reach, though there is a mysterious half-light. The souls wander around in little silent crowds. They seem to miss their life back (or up) in the world. The mood is sad.

But there was no good picture of the next life. Cicero in his essay on old age tells men and women not to worry about what will come. “Either there is nothing,” he says, “or it’s a good place (optandum).” Apparently some men worried that Hades might be a place of suffering. But punishment—punishment for individual wrongdoing—that wasn’t one of its features.

At the top of their gravestones Romans put these initials:

D. M. S.
( for Dis Manibus Sacris: “To the Sacred Gods of the Underworld”).

The Romans figured there was a heavenly administration or bureaucracy and those Deii Manii were in charge of souls. So they addressed their tombstones to them, to the pertinent Ministry. Invoking the gods was part of piety—of worship, of keeping them disposed. You asked a god to protect you. You hoped he had no grudge, as Neptune had against Ulysses. Essentially your relationship with the Underworld gods or any of them was negative. Omitted worship may result in your undoing.

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“The incense is in that bowl, Basílides,” said the Roman official. “When you are finished making your offering to the emperor, I will give you this certificate with my signature. Keep it with you and show it to any Roman official who might ask to see it and you will not be bothered further.”

Basílides looked at the bronze tripod with the fire burning, and the bust of the Emperor Decius. He had only to put his hand in the bowl of incense, bring out a few grains, and sprinkle them onto the fire. It was nothing. The official sitting at his desk would then sign his name to the little parchment strip and stamp it.

The official pretended not to pay much attention but he was curious. What would this Basílides do? He was an intelligent and well-educated man in his fifties. If he did not sacrifice to the emperor he would be thrown into prison and then fed to the lions in the amphitheater once the next group of rebels had been rounded up. He was known to be a leader of the illegal Christian community. They called him a bishop.

“Please,” said the official. “I don’t have all day.”

Basílides stood taller for a moment, then walked over to the tripod and sacrificed to the emperor Decius.
He was the bishop of the diocese of Leon-Astorga in 250 during the Decian persecution. The bishop of Merida (Emerita) likewise apostated.

Their sin naturally angered their Christian communities, who wrote to the Bishop of Carthage, St. Cyprian, to ask for their dismissal.
Why did the Spanish Christians write to an African bishop to deal with this case? There was obviously a special relationship with the African Church. Most scholars believe Christianity came to Spain from Africa. Maybe Carthage was their Mother Church.

Cyprian fired the two apostates and called a synod of bishops. All this appears in the famous letter 65 of his correspondence, and it is the first real news we have of the infant Christian community in Spain (254 AD).

Basílides himself appealed to the bishop of Rome. The pope in Rome had no particular authority over the Spanish Church but Rome was reputed to be more tolerant. And in fact Pope Steven I reinstated him. There is no record of the conflict this must have created.

Those bishops had sinned very gravely and needed some exemplary punishment, no doubt. The pile of stones is just over here….all you have to do is pick one up and throw it at them.

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This is a certificate like the one given to Basílides after he had offered sacrifice to the emperor as a god. It was called a libellus, and the owner, a libellaticus. Excavators in Egypt have turned up many of these. Every Roman citizen was obliged to possess one and show it on demand. The heavy writing in the middle is the signature of the presiding officer and the writing at the bottom is the date. It was issued in 250 AD, just the year Basílides apostated.

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