Great Names in History

Most old towns are lost. Look at the maps drawn by Strabo and Ptolomeo: not one in ten is still around. What happened to them all? How can a whole town disappear?

Remember that those old towns, sometimes called cities, were no more than villages by our standards. They were a little cuddling together of maybe fifty houses. Most didn’t have a wall around them, so there’s no big orderly pile of rocks to signal archaeologists. And the houses themselves were made of adobe, which after they were abandoned became just a heap of dirt.
It actually helps excavators locate them if an enemy had razed the town because then they find a nice, even, layer of ash as they uncover the mound.

But some of those long-gone cities meant a lot in ancient times and were the scenes of great battles and the hometowns of famous emperors and other famous people. Trajan was from Itálica, now a vast marble junkyard near Seville, and Hannibal’s wife was from Cástulo, a mound just south of Linares.

To look for old Iberian towns like Cástulo archaeologists refer to the maps by the Greeks mentioned above—Strabo and Ptolomeo.

For Roman towns they use two good sources: the Antonine Itinerary and the Vicarello Cups.

The Antonine Itinerary was probably made at the beginning of the third century. It charts thirty-four main roads and all the cities and towns, with the distance between them in Roman miles (1481 meters). And even better, it records partial distances between mansio and mansio, that is, between points that represented a days’ march and which served as resting stops and places to change horses.

The other great source, the Vicarello Cups, are four silver cylinders engraved with all the stops on the trip between a shrine in northern Italy (the Aquae Apollinares) and the temple of Hercules in Cadiz, Spain. The cups are exvotos offered by Spaniards who made the pilgrimage about the end of the first century. Like the Antonine Itinerary, the cups list all the towns and cities on the way, plus the mansioni and the distances between them.

Already in prehistoric times, there were two main roads around the peninsula. At first the Romans used and improved those. The oldest and most travelled was precisely the route on the Vicarello Cups: the route through the Pyrenees and down the western and southern coasts all the way to Cadiz.

That they called the Via Herculea or later, the Via Augustea.

The other famous road was the Via de la Plata, which paralleled the modern Portuguese-Spanish border. It went from Mérida to the rich mineral mines in Galicia.

The road along the Portuguese coast and a northern route straight to the gold mines and Galicia were the other Mother Roads.

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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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Few could resist the attraction of the gladiator combats.

The Roman Amphitheater at Mérida, Spain

(Click twice on thumbnail to enlarge)
Gladiators came from the dregs of society and the combats were rude and cruel; and yet they seduced not only the rabble but the patricians and leaders of the state, who also came to watch the killing and the gore.

The most famous account of an irresistible attraction comes from St. Augustine. He was able to turn away but his friend Alipio got hooked.
Alipio’s parents had sent him to Rome to study law, says Augustine, and one day some of his classmates had the idea to go and see the combats. Alipio, who was a fine, sensitive young man, refused to go with them. The very idea horrified him. But his friends cheerfully picked him up and carried him off to the Colosseum. “All right,” Alipio told them. “You can take my body there, but you won’t be able to make me look at what goes on. I will sit with you but keep my eyes closed. It will be as if I weren’t there.”

He held out for awhile but suddenly the crowd roared. One of the gladiators had fallen to the ground wounded. Fans were all surprised but they were angered or disappointed or gladdened, depending on the fighter they supported. One hundred thousand spectators stamped and shouted at the top of their lungs. Alipio was so curious to see what had incensed them that he peeked between his fingers. “And so he received a greater wound in his soul than that gladiator had received in his body,” says Augustine. “Because afterwards with the spilled blood he drank in the joy in cruelty.” From that moment on he became a crazy fan of the combats and never missed a show.

Nevertheless there were some men and women in all the centuries who did resist. Julius Caesar, who sponsored many gladiator shows and even founded a gladiator school, didn’t himself show any interest in the fights while he sat in the ring. He used the time to write letters and dispatches and rarely even looked up from his work.
And Seneca called them barbaric and de-humanizing at a time when Rome’s degeneracy seemed at its height (Nero).

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The Roman circus was a race-track.

None has survived intact but enough of the one in Mérida, Spain, is left to give you the feeling of the place. It was built at the time of Christ.

(Click twice on thumbnail to enlarge)

It was one of the most important race-tracks in the Empire—big enough for thirty thousand spectators. The track itself was enormous—thirty thousand square meters (three soccer fields).
In the center, dividing the track in two, was a long narrow island called the spina, full of rich decoration such as obelisks and statues of all kinds. At the head of the track were carceres—the little rooms where the chariots waited before taking positions at the starting gate.

The Romans loved these horse-races even better than the gladiator combats in the amphitheaters. The best charioteer of all times was probably Gaius Apuleius Diocles, a Portuguese (Lusitanian). He triumphed in Rome but he no doubt got his start at the Mérida track.

.a scene from the movie Ben Hur
(Click twice on thumbnail to enlarge)

No one knows exactly when the last race took place in the Mérida circus. Chariot racing declined when Christianity was made the official religion of the empire. The Councils of Elvira and Arles expressly prohibited the profession of chariot driver (and clowns). Yet there is an inscription in one of the carceres that declares that in 340 the circus was renovated. And there is a sixth-century tombstone in a Mérida graveyard to honor a famous chariot driver called Sabiniano.

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