It’s the evening of Easter Saturday. I don’t use my computer on Sundays, so this is my opportunity to wish you all a happy Easter. With or without chocolate eggs, bunnies, or whatever!
All over the world, Christian bloggers are wracking their brains on what to say about today. I have nothing original to say.
Yesterday Christ died for us, denounced by a false friend, arrested and condemned on a charge which all concerned knew to be false, and executed in a manner unnecessarily cruel. He warned those who follow him that, if he was hated, we should expect to be. There’s been plenty of that in the news this week. It is possible to become very depressed by the savagery and unconcealed bile directed towards harmless people. I remember days when much of what is going on would have been unthinkable.
But God is in charge. Times of peace may be nice, but this world is not our home. In times of peace and plenty, morality decays. It is remarkably hard to be pleasure-seeking, when fighting for your very existence! This is why God allows wars and suffering; to prevent human society putrefying out of sheer self-indulgence. After 50 years of peace, we can hardly complain if it is our turn.
It looks very much as if, over the next few years, God will now winnow the church with fire, separating the sheep from the goats. There will be the fake Christians, who conform, and are rather contemptuously flattered by the world for dancing to its tune. There will be the real Christians, who will not deny the gospel, and will be at risk of being imprisoned and having their property seized. We must all pray to be among the number of the latter.
At the moment the issue chosen by the wicked men of the world is whether we endorse unnatural vice. We shall be tempted to pay lip service to this absurd demand, for a quiet life. We must refuse. We should remember that the early Christians were persecuted for three centuries for refusing to burn a pinch of incense to Caesar – seemingly a small thing, which nobody else took seriously. But that small thing was chosen, by the powers of this world, precisely because Christians could not do it in good conscience. That is how persecution works; find an issue on which your enemy cannot give way, and use it to torment him. We must never suppose that some “small issue” is not important. It may be another “pinch of incense”. Trotsky mocked Stalin for his show trials, for collecting “dead souls”. That is the risk in conformity.
Tomorrow we shall be reminded that the powers of hell could not prevail. Christ is risen, and those who thought themselves important, and wrote him off found themselves forgotten, except as footnotes to his life and victory. So will it be with the great ones of our age.
In the mean time, we must remember to pray (and to check whether God answered, and to give him thanks when we find he does; and when we find that he did not). We must find ways to evade the demands of the wicked, for we are under no obligation to make their evil task easier. We must share the good news – that all this rubbish in ourselves and in the world is only temporary, that he can forgive our failings, and that if we give our lives to Christ, we can hope to see an end to it all and better days.
While looking for material about the Meta Sudans, I stumbled across something which very few people know.
Most people will know that the Colosseum is named after a colossal statue of Nero that used to stand nearby. Originally cast in bronze and stood outside the Domus Aurea, it was changed into a statue of the Sun by the Flavians, and moved slightly to stand near their new amphitheatre.
The bronze status is long gone. But how many people know that the base on which it stood still existed well into the 20th century? I certainly did not! Indeed there are photographs of it. It was demolished by Mussolini, in the course of constructing the Via del foro imperiali.
Aerial view of the valley of the Amphitheatre with the base of the Colossus of Nero, the Meta Sudans and the Arch of Constantine in a picture from about 1895.
In the middle of the left hand side of the Colosseum is a dark rectangular base. This is where the Colossus stood. Note that the modern Via del foro imperiali is not on this photograph – it had yet to be built.
Next, a slightly fuzzy ground level photograph from the Wellcome Library, from about 1929:
Wellcome Library M0000104. Base of the Colossus of Nero, Coliseum, Rome, Italy. 1929
The hill behind the base is the Velian Hill, and it isn’t there today: Mussolini bulldozed it. If we stood in the same location today, we would have the Colosseum at our back, and a view straight down the Via del Foro Imperiali to the Victor Emmanuel monument in front of us.
Next a couple of photos of the base from different angles, from a montage found online here in a set of flash cards:
A look at the area indicates just what alterations Mussolini made. This photograph shows that the Colosseum actually stood in a hollow of the hills, approached from the Circus Maximus:
The whole area was rather different:
Mussolini certainly changed all that.
Some may wish to know what the Colossus itself looked like. We have a medallion of Gordian III, which we already used for the Meta Sudans, which shows the Colossus standing behind it (via here):
Medallion of Gordian III, ca. 240, depicting the Colosseum and Meta Sudans
Better than this is a depiction in a gem:
Amethyst gem (1-2nd c. AD) in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Antikensammlung inv. FG 2665: Bergmann 1993, 11, pl. 2.3. Via Albertson, p.106-7.
There is a useful 2001 article by Albertson on the Colossus which is available on JSTOR.[1] He calculates that the Colossus was about 100 feet tall (31.524 m). The statue had a radiate crown, was nude, with the right hip jutting to the side, and the right arm supported by a rudder, while the left leans on a pillar. A globe supports the rudder.
The National Geographic reconstruction of the statue and base looks fairly accurate, therefore (although the background should be the Velian Hill, as we have seen):
National Geographic reconstruction of the Colossus of Nero
Anthony Alcock has translated a long Coptic martyrdom or “passion” for us. This is the Passion of S. Lacaron, which Orlandi dates to the 8th century. The text and translation is here:
The Coptic Encyclopedia (vol. 5, 1991) has a useful article on Lacaron here, which reads as follows:
(CE: 1423b-1424a)
LACARON, SAINT, martyr in fourth-century Egypt (feast day: 14 Babah). His Passion has come down in a complete codex in Bohairic in the Vatican Library (Coptic 68, fols. 1-15) (Balestri and Hyvemat, 1908, Vol. 1, pp. 1-23). The text is that of one of the late Coptic Passions from the period of the CYCLES and can be dated to the eighth century. It deals with the period of persecutions under DIOCLETIAN. The Roman prefect ARIANUS comes to Asyut and orders sacrifice to the gods. Lacaron, a soldier, refuses and, after the usual arguments, is put in jail. The text then describes the usual episodes of torture, miraculous healings, sudden conversions—of a magistrate and the torturers themselves—and other visions and heavenly interventions. It includes an account of the archangel Michael’s gathering up the various pieces of Lacaron and restoring them to life. In the end Lacaron is killed, after converting and baptizing the soldiers around him.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Balestri, I., and H. Hyvernat. Acta Martyrum. CSCO 43, 44. Paris, 1908.
Baumeister, T. Martyr Invictus. Der Martyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche. Munster, 1972.
TITO ORLANDI
It is very useful to have the Coptic Encyclopedia accessible! And very many thanks indeed to Dr Alcock for making this text accessible!
On Wednesday I posted a selection of old photographs of the Meta Sudans, and asked why Mussolini demolished it. I then came across an article by Elizabeth Marlowe, ‘The Mutability of All Things’: The Rise, Fall and Rise of the Meta Sudans Fountain in Rome,[1] which answered some of these questions.
Meta Sudans. Du Perac (16th c.)
Here is an illustration by Lafrery (1593)[2], which, curiously, Marlowe attributes to Du Perac (whose volume does not contain such an illustration):
Meta Sudans. Lafrery, Speculum Romanae, 1593 (NOT Duperac). Via University of Heidelberg.
By the 19th century, the Meta Sudans was in a sad state.
Already in 1816, the architect Valadier had lamented the fact that the passage of time had produced ‘the most wretched ruins [disgraziatissime rovine]’ right in front of the ‘Famous Flavian Amphitheatre’. A major restoration campaign undertaken in mid-century can be understood as an attempt to address the problem of the Meta’s ugliness. The precarious, upper reaches of the cone were removed, the concavities of the former niches filled in and its jagged, timeworn surfaces smoothed, producing the stable (if somewhat dumpy) appearance of the Meta seen in numerous photographs and postcards of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
It is a pity that no reference is given for the “restoration campaign” – one would like to know more.
To continue:
The official commission of 1871 advocated the undertaking of ‘all those demolitions that will enhance the grandeur [imponenza]’ of the major monuments of Rome, with the aim of creating the ‘most scenic vantage points free from clutter or inconvenience [senza ingombro e senza disagio].[40] Under these conditions, the Flavian fountain could no longer compete with its erstwhile sibling, although it would take sixty years, and the force of Mussolini’s urban ‘sventramenti’ (disembowelings) to finally bring the axe down.[41]
The vestiges of ancient Rome, carefully selected and manicured, played an important role in Mussolini’s creation of a monumental city-centre worthy of grand, Fascist spectacles.[42] While planners had long recognized the need for an artery linking Piazza Venezia with the southern part of the city, the issue for Mussolini was less one of circulation than of symbolism. One should be able to stand at the Piazza Venezia, seat of the new government, and see the Colosseum, emblem of Rome’s glorious past. Like his Risorgimento predecessors, he believed that ‘the millennial monuments of our history must loom gigantic in their necessary solitude’.[43] Never mind the fact that the Velian hill, three churches and 5,500 units of housing stood in the way. All were demolished during the 1932 creation of the ‘via dell’Impero’ (now the via dei Fori Imperiali), a showcase of the Fascist appropriation of the past.[44] The mostly buried ancient imperial fora that flanked the route of the new boulevard were excavated, and the road lined with bronze statues of the emperors associated with the fora, along with maps chronicling the expansion of the Roman Empire in antiquity and in the Fascist era.
But Mussolini wasn’t finished yet. His new parade route was not to be limited to the via dell’lmpero, but would continue to the south, past the Colosseum, through the ‘Flavian piazza’ and the Arch of Constantine and down the via S. Gregorio to the Circus Maximus. The via S. Gregorio was thus widened, repaved, spruced up with Fascist dedications and rechristened the ‘via dei Trionfi’, to underscore the topographical and ideological parallels between this route and that of the ancient Roman triumphal procession. Most importantly, the Stele of Axum, Mussolini’s trophy from his newly conquered Ethiopian empire, was installed in 1936 at the new terminus by the Circus. …
The Meta Sudans and the colossal statue base were doubly doomed. Not only were they not very attractive, but they stood directly in the path of the central passageway of Constantine’s Arch, thus preventing parades from marching straight through. A photograph of a ceremony held just after the inauguration of the via dei Trionfi reveals all too plainly the awkwardness and asymmetries that ensued (Figure 2.6), and which prompted the Governatore of Rome, Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi, to declare the ruins ‘a most serious embarrassment’. This skewed topographical relationship had been acceptable under Constantine, when the triumphal route had turned left just beyond the Arch and continued up the via Sacra through the Forum Romanum to the Capitoline temple. Much of this very route had been self-consciously retraced as recently as 1536, when Charles V made his triumphal entrance into Rome. But the Fascist parade route ignored the via Sacra, continuing instead up the full length of the Colosseum piazza, and only turning left once it reached the via dell’lmpero.
To make the piazza serve the function of ceremonial thoroughfare, the Meta Sudans, as well as the statue base, had to go. Both were razed in 1936, the year of the dedication of the Stele of Axum. On Mussolini’s orders, however, the memory of the decrepit structures was not to be entirely erased. The archaeologist A. M. Colini was given two years to investigate thoroughly the remains of the ancient fountain, and his findings were published along with two careful reconstruction drawings by the Fascist architect Italo Gismondi (Figure 2.7).[45] Moreover, like the police chalking around a fallen body, the contours of the monuments’ vanished forms were outlined in a lighter coloured stone on the surface of the newly repaved piazza …
41. A. Cederna, Mussolini Urbanista: lo sventramento di Roma negli anni del consenso, Rome: Laterza, 1980; D. Manacorda and R. Tamassia, Il Piccone del Regime, Rome: Armando Curcio, 1985.
45. A. M. Colini, ‘Meta Sudans’, Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 13, 1937,15-39.
It is interesting to learn that the base of the Colossus survived this late.
It is also interesting to realise that the Colosseum actually stood in a hollow in the hill, until Mussolini cut through the Velian hill to make the Via del Foro Imperiali, and that ancient parades turned left at the Meta Sudans and advanced into the forum. The Via del Foro Imperiali distorts the whole shape of the ancient landscape, splendid as it is.
The function of the Meta Sudans is vividly described by Marlowe, and is well worth repeating here.
Independent of its historical referents, the fountain would surely have been a welcome gift in this bustling piazza. Due to a number of natural and unnatural phenomena occurring over the subsequent centuries (including Mussolini’s removal in toto of the Velian hill), the Colosseum valley is much more open and spacious today than it was in antiquity.
In the Flavians’ day, even without the Neronian structures, the constricted space within the valley’s steep walls must have felt oppressively crowded, particularly when thousands of agitated spectators were thronging towards, or bursting out of, the amphitheatre’s west entrance, or lining the streets to watch triumphal parades pass by along the via Saera.
It also must have been stiflingly hot for much of the year. The Meta Sudans seems to have been purpose-built not only to provide fresh, abundant drinking water from the spigots around its base, but also to cool the surrounding air. Its ingenious (though imperfectly understood) design somehow managed to raise water all the way up an inner pipeway in the cone, from which it burst forth out of a spherical finial and then flowed down the sides to collect in a basin below. The fountain’s great height would have widened the range of its cooling mists.
The sensual pleasures afforded by the Meta Sudans would have included the aural and the visual, as well as the tactile. While nothing survives of the fountain’s marble cladding, the depictions of the monument on coins minted by the Emperor Titus clearly show niches around its base (Figure 2.3), which presumably contained statuary. In fact, in the sixteenth century, Pirro Ligorio reports having witnessed the carting off to a private warehouse of the ‘marine monsters, heads of ferocious animals and images of nymphs’ from the area around the fountain.[19] These fragments may have been the inspiration for the Triton in the niche in Du Perac’s elegant reconstruction of 1575 (Figure 2.4)[20] Overall, the fountain must have been a most attractive landmark in the new Flavian piazza, and it is not surprising that many of the numismatic commemorations of the amphitheatre proudly display the Meta Sudans alongside it as an integral component of the Flavian building programme in the valley.
20. E. Du Perac. I Vestigi dell’antichita di Roma Raccolti et Ritrattl in Perspettiva con ogni Diligentia, Rome: Apresso Lorenzo della Vaschena, 1575.
A sestertius of Titus (80-81) showing the Meta Sudans
Curiously, there is a postscript to the story. It seems that some Romans would like to rebuild the Meta Sudans, or something like it on the site. The project is primarily a political one, unfortunately, designed to rally the left under the guise of attacking Mussolini. Since Mussolini is remembered fondly by a considerable section of Romans, it seems unlikely to proceed. But it would be nice to see it rise again, especially if done in a historically accurate manner.
There are some nice photos in the Marlowe article, unfortunately too poor to reproduce in the copy I have. One shows the Fascists parading past the half-removed Meta Sudans. Another the Colosseum from the air, showing the site of the base of the Colossus. It would be nice to have better images of both. But anyone who has searched for images knows what a hit-and-miss business it is!
The Marlowe article is very valuable, because it gives us such a clear picture of the technical value of the Meta Sudans in its original setting, and so much detail on why it was removed. I wonder if Colini’s article is online?
UPDATE: I find that a Google Books Preview of Aristotle Kallis, The Third Rome, 1922-43: The Making of the Fascist Capital, 2014, is online here.
[1]E. Marlowe, “‘The Mutability of All Things’: The Rise, Fall and Rise of the Meta Sudans Fountain in Rome”, in D. Arnold and A. Ballantyne, Architecture as Experience: Radical Change in Spatial Practice, Routledge, 2004, p.. Online at Academia.edu here. The whole volume is at Google Books here in a rather odd preview format.↩
[2]Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae. Via the splendid University of Heidelberg copy↩
It’s been a little while since I posted a picture of the Meta Sudans. This was the conical fountain at the end of the Appian Way, just outside the Colosseum.
At Wikimedia Commons today I found an old photograph, from the Bundesarchiv Bild library (no 102-12292) of Mussolini, from a podium outside the Colosseum. The Meta Sudans stands nearby, soon to be demolished at his orders. Here is the picture on Wikimedia Commons, which has a date of September 1931:
Mussolini (left on the podium) addresses Fascist supporters outside the Colosseum and the Meta Sudans.
But here is what seems to be the same picture at the Bundesarchiv site (complete with annoying and pointless “watermark”), with the date April 1926. This states, contra to Wikimedia, that it was taken after Mussolini returned from Tripoli, and says nothing about “youth” at all.
I do wish that I could find a source that explained why Mussolini had the ancient fountain demolished. For a movement that drew inspiration from Ancient Rome, doing so was a curious thing. Probably some Italian source will hold the answer, but these are not nearly visible enough online.
Here’s another photograph of the Meta Sudans, this time by Richard Brenan, Dungarvan, Waterford on a holiday in Italy c.1910. A copy is present on the Waterford County Museum site, although with a watermark. (I must say that the greed of repositories for fees, when they are paid to make material available by the public, is rather shameful).
Meta Sudans ca. 1900. Waterford County Museum, EB246.
This one I got from Twitter.
There are also some images available on coins, which are interesting. Here is a sestertius of Titus, showing the Meta Sudans to the left of the Colosseum:
A sestertius of Titus (80-81) showing the Meta Sudans
The same coin is depicted here:
Meta Sudans on a sestertius of Titus
There is also a medallion of Gordian III, ca. 240, via here, which depicts the Meta Sudans in antiquity:
Medallion of Gordian III, ca. 240, depicting the Colosseum and Meta Sudans
And a too-dark photograph of the medallion from the British Museum website (and kudos to them for putting it online):
Medallion of Gordian III, ca. 240, depicting Meta Sudans and Colosseum
The sestertius of Titus is common, and copies can be had on the market easily enough. This means that we have some good photos, made freely accessible online. On the other hand the medallion of Gordian is rare. This means that our only access is rather rubbish. Museums that hold copies don’t make good quality photos available. One has to ask: isn’t this the reverse of what should happen? If public owned museums hold things, they should be more accessible, not less?
Now something else. Here is an excerpt of the Bufalini map of Rome (1551) indicating the position of the Meta Sudans:
Let’s now have some more old photographs.
Here’s another old photograph of the Meta Sudans, from the other side, with the Palatine in the background and the Arch of Constantine to the left:
Here’s another one, this time around 1922, from here:
Meta Sudans and Arch of Constantine, around 1922
The next one, from here (which also has a bunch of other photos of the Meta Sudans), is looking towards the arch of Titus, and taken around 1880:
Meta Sudans, ca. 1880
And another from the same site:
Meta Sudans
And a third one, also from the same site. Note how the Meta Sudans lines up with the road to the forum?
Postcard of the Meta Sudans
Let’s end with a 16th century drawing by Du Perac, showing much the same view looking towards the forum.
Meta Sudans. Du Perac (16th c.)
It is remarkable that the monument looks basically the same as it does in the 19th century pictures. Du Perac has depicted it as taller and thinner than it was – it can hardly have got fatter since his time! – but it looks as if it was no taller in his day. The main damage to it, no doubt, occurred in the Dark Ages.
I do wonder if a complete set of documents exists in Italian archives somewhere. Is it conceivable that the demolition was not documented? Not really.
