Ab Urbe Adspecta

You are now Emperor. Hooray! You have founded a new dynasty of rulers and hope to secure your place in history. The only problem: the last guy who had your job was assassinated and the empire has been in civil war for the last year... In this blog post we will discuss the Emperor Septimius Severus, the city of Ostia, and how the former used public writing to solidify his position as patron of the later. When Septimius Severus came to power in 193 CE he commenced a building program in Ostia, Rome's port city. This port was important to Rome's grain supply, which Septimius Severus knew. Thus, he constructed new buildings all around Ostia in order to demonstrate his munificence to its people. On these buildings he placed inscriptions with a powerful message: Ostia and the Empire was going to return to peace and prosperity with the Severans in charge. The inscription from the Theatre in Ostia. Photo by Jack Hase. In the theatre in Ostia there is a large inscription comm

This is a mini-post. Not a true post in nature but an excuse to make a short point about the Pantheon that pertains to the themes of this Blog.  Readers will remember that the Pantheon, as we see it today, was built by Hadrian around 125 CE. Nevertheless, it bears the inscription that was placed onto the original structure and that names Agrippa as the builder. This was not the only time Hadrian refused to monumentalize his name either.  The Imperial Lives states: “In Rome, Hadrian rebuilt the Pantheon, the Saepta, the Basilica of Neptune, many temples, the Forum of Augustus, and the Baths of Agrippa. He dedicated all of these buildings in the names of their original builders.” The question presents itself: why would Hadrian not monumentalize his name on these structures as the re-builder ? Surely, since we find inscriptions naming re-builders  all around Rome, this would have been the expectation. Herein lies what I think is the solution to this problem.  The Panth

I want you to just look at the following picture for a few seconds. This is the Pantheon. What you see was built around 125 CE by the emperor Hadrian after fire destroyed the previous iteration. In its day the building was in the heart of a high traffic area; porticoes, basilicas, baths and other temples surrounded it. While its own function as a atypical temple is up for debate, its grandeur tells us it was an important site. Look up at the inscription. The letters are the same height as the people walking below. These words were meant to be read. The Pantheon in Rome. Photo by Jack Hase. Here, in part 3 of this series, we will look at the the readability of the inscription adorning the front of the Pantheon. As with the previous post, three aspects of this inscription made it easily readable to a broad 'less-literate' audience. The inscription reads: M. AGRIPPA. L. F. COS. TERTIVM. FECIT (Marcus Agrippa, Son of Lucius, Built This in his Third Consulship) [Transl

Huge columns tower above you, dominating your field of vision. You look up you see the shining white face of the temple, and on it, the names of imperial family members deified after their death. The size and place of this dedication is a testimony to its importance. The inscriptions on buildings took up prime real estate in Rome and carried important meaning. In order that the highest number of people could understand this meaning, these inscriptions made themselves as easy to read as possible. Here is an examples of a temple that follows this program of readability. As a reminder from the previous post, three important approaches that were used to make inscriptions readable were: 1) the use of clear CAPITAL LETTERS, 2) the use of common words and abbreviations, 3) and the use of formulas to order inscriptions consistently.   The Temple of Divus Antoninus Pius and Diva Faustina. Photo by Jack Hase. Part of the Temple of Divus ('Deified') Antoninus Pius and Diva

This blog has already touched on different ways public writing functioned in the Roman world. It could be a vehicle of power, it could contextualize spaces, and it could record and solidify social agreements. However, one question still needs to be addressed: how could inscriptions be so important in a world where most people were not fully 'literate'? The answer is surprisingly simple. Romans made inscriptions as easy to read as possible. They achieved this by using a number of different approaches which all acted to lessen the gap between the written Latin carved in stone and the spoken Latin the general public could understand. These approaches include: 1) The use of CAPITAL LETTERS. Have you ever noticed how you never see lower case letters in Roman inscriptions? We know Romans had cursive letters from various graffiti and some rare letters, but on monuments constantly use the same font of capital letters. This is because a consistent and clear font made reading eas

72 CE: a massive earthquake shakes Pompeii. A temple to an exotic goddess crumbles to its foundations. But from the rubble a new temple is built. It is above the doorway that the name of this benevolent civic patron is written for all to see: Numerius Popidius Celsinus, now the only six-year-old boy given a place in the local senate. Scale model of the rebuilt Temple of Isis in Pompeii in the  Museo Archiologioco Nazionale di Napoli. Photo by Jack Hase. Let's rewind. Under the empire in the 1st century CE the Popidius family was active in local Pompeiian politics. This was a leading family in the community that participated in common aspects of Roman aristocratic life, including the owning and freeing of slaves. One of these freedman slaves was named Numerius Popidius Ampliatus; the fact that he bared the name of his previous master's family was a sign of his freedman status while 'Ampliatus' is related to the Latin word denoting increasing wealth. This name was a

The site of Pompeii, as it survives today, is known as one of the best preserved examples of a Roman city. It is this concept that allows historians and archaeologists to use Pompeii as a case study in order to know more about the Roman world as a whole in the absence, with a few exceptions, of other equally well preserved cities. However, Pompeii was not always Roman. Oscan inscription from Pompeii. Photo by Jack Hase in the Museo Archiologioco Nazionale di Napoli. Urban occupation of Pompeii can be dated nearly as far back as at Rome, to the 6th century BCE, and from its foundation it was dominated by various non-Roman Italian peoples, such as the Etruscans and the Oscan speaking Samnites. After Rome's war with the Samnite people in the 4th century BCE Pompeii became an ally to Rome but continued largely unchanged, still using Oscan for its public inscriptions. It was not until 80 BCE, after Pompeii and a number of Rome's other allies had attempted to rebel against Ro

You are now reading. This is probably not the first time you have read today and it likely will not be the last. Reading is a part of your life and it would not be at all difficult for you, if asked, to come up with a long list of the various functions reading serves in your life and the different contexts you use it in. We live in a world that is printed, painted, and neoned. Can you name a room that does not contain any words? For us, this is what literacy means: the ability to create and decode patterns of symbols in order to discern and convey meaning in the broadest sense. However, if we throw our attention to history we can still find writing carved, chiseled, and plastered throughout the densely occupied world, throughout the urban fabric.  By way of introduction, this is a blog about Roman public writing. Here we shall pursue a discussion of the uses, function, meaning, and interpretation of texts contextual to ancient public spaces. But this is meaningless as of yet. For if