A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  Constantine himself would be given a colossal statue of his own. It would be installed in a law court, or basilica, in the old Roman Forum. This over life‐size statue of wood and marble showed the emperor as the king of the Olympian gods, Jupiter, ruling over the known world. The statue was displayed in one of the grandest new halls in the old Forum, the “New Basilica,” which Maxentius had begun and Constantine finished.

  Constantine’s arch, dedicated in 315 CE, and Constantine’s colossus in the monumental “New Basilica” were important additions to downtown Rome; but the people who watched them being built and installed witnessed other significant events that were not always fixated on Constantine’s larger‐than‐life personality. Archaeology of the imperial Forum spaces, located in the same neighborhood, gives us a more intimate picture of Rome’s fourth‐century urban history (Figure 8.2).

  Figure 8.2 The Roman Forum was the commercial and political heart of the city. By the late first century BCE, politicians had begun expanding it with their own projects, under their own names. Many emperors would follow suit. This reconstruction shows these “imperial fora” of Rome, the emperors’ grand additions to the city center. From top left to bottom right (roughly northwest to southeast) are: the Forum of Trajan, the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of the Emperor Nerva, and the Forum of Peace. By the fourth century CE, the Forum of Trajan was one of the most popular areas for displaying statues of Late Antique politicians. By contrast, parts of the nearby Forum of Peace had been dismantled and razed. Residents in fourth‐ and fifth‐century Rome lived their life like this, one building at a time, constantly readjusting their expectations about the city. Plan, with annotations by the author, after the digital reconstruction by Inkling.

  From R. Meneghini and R. Santangeli Valenzani, I fori imperiali. Gli scavi del comune di Roma (1991–2007) (Rome: Viviani, 2007), p. 30. Used with the permission of Roberto Meneghini and La Soprintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Rome.

  Just down the street from the site of the Arch of Constantine and the Flavian Amphitheater, just behind the “New Basilica,” was Rome’s historic Forum of Peace. It had been built by Emperor Vespasian to commemorate the war against Judaea and had remained an important green space throughout the second through third centuries CE. By the first decade of the fourth century, however, sections of this open plaza – which had once featured a long charming pond – were being demolished. And a group of small buildings, constructed out of the recycled marble and brick, was inserted into the once‐tranquil urban oasis. Although the wealthy people or persons who paid for this project are unknown, archaeologists have been able to specify the date of their intervention, the early fourth century CE, based on the discovery of bricks that had been stamped with the year of their manufacture. At this stage the buildings likely functioned as a warehouse or pop‐up market space.

  The project must have changed the feel of the once‐grand urban plaza almost beyond recognition. The contrast with the developments down the street must have been striking. In the heart of old Rome, Vespasian’s victory monument had been dramatically disassembled at the same time that shiny monuments for Constantine were being erected. This evidence is an important reminder that the heartbeat of cities, although these spaces did see significant changes in Late Antiquity, cannot be charted as a healthy line leading to sudden death. In this case, it is likely that the warehouses and markets displaced by one of the grandest projects of the early fourth century, Maxentius and Constantine’s “New Basilica,” had the unexpected development of displacing merchants and workmen who now needed a new home for their businesses. Two centuries later, even their new buildings would be leveled and changed. By the sixth century CE, the Forum‐turned‐warehouse district would be the site of several burials.

  The practice of burying the dead within the city walls, although it would have been virtually unheard of in Constantine’s time, is one of the first signs that expectations of what constituted city life were not static values. The idea of what it meant to live in a city could change quite dramatically from the fourth century CE – at least in this one neighborhood of the old capital.

  The communities of Rome’s Aventine Hill

  South of the city center, on one of modern Rome’s most residential hills, the Aventine, another story was playing out over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Aventine Hill had been an important site throughout Rome’s history. The Circus Maximus, Rome’s Greatest Race Track, had been built in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine Hills. During the Republican period, the hill itself had become famous for the resistance of the plebeian class, who organized on the hill to demand greater access to the legislative veto power. In the early Empire, it overlooked a series of emporia, or warehouses, along the Tiber, where a range of commodities from ceramic shipping containers to imported marble was offloaded after arriving from Ostia. These trades gave the hill an identifiably commercial character.

  By the fourth century CE, the character of the Aventine Hill had changed again, becoming a place of wealthy homes (Figure 8.3). It was a diverse neighborhood of temples, baths, churches, and also at least one Mithraeum. The hill was a veritable palimpsest of different epochs, in whose streets one could read the ever‐changing story of Rome. The visible traces of the first true wall of the city, built in the fourth century BCE, could be found on the Late Antique hill. Six hundred years after that wall was erected on the Aventine’s slopes, a temple would be dedicated to the Syrian god, Jupiter Dolichenus, in the second century CE. These gradual but steady changes continued even during the turbulent political years of the middle of the third century. Emperor Decius, for example, invested in a large public bath complex, or thermae, located here. The footprint of Decius’ baths is still identifiable, and the dedication of the building is known from inscriptions. A statue of Hercules was even found among its halls, as the gods formed part of the standard repertoire of Roman baths. The building was restored in the middle of the fourth century and again in 414 CE, after the “sack” of Rome by the Gothic leader Alaric.

  Figure 8.3 Ancient Romans prided themselves on their city’s famed seven hills, although they often disagreed about which hills counted; the reason for their disagreement is that there are, in reality, fourteen hills in or near the city of Rome. This plan shows one of the most central and most storied: the Aventine Hill. Romans believed that Romulus’ lesser known brother, Remus, had been its first settler. Remus was largely forgotten, but over time, his hill grew into an important part of Rome’s identity. By the early fifth century CE, as this plan shows, the Aventine was the site of impressive baths, a local Mithraeum, and early Christian churches. Even portions of the old Republican‐era city wall continued to be visible in the Late Antique neighborhood. Author’s plan modified from Filippo Coarelli, Roma (Bari: Editori Laterza, 2008), p. 449.

  Perhaps the most intriguing story that the streets of the Aventine tell, however, concerns the different worship communities located here and how they gradually made themselves known – and what happened to their meeting spaces over time. One of these groups was a community of Mithras worshippers. By 202 CE, based on the discovery of an ancient graffito, we know that they had been given permission to renovate one of the rooms in the lower levels of a Roman home, turning it into a Mithraeum (CIMRM 476). This worship space was then covered in remarkable, colorful wall paintings, which still survive, showing scenes important to the Mithras worshippers.

  The paintings on one side of the Mithraeum’s banquet hall show the seven distinctive levels available to initiates. Scenes on the other side show a procession of worshippers leading a bull, ram, and pig to an animal sacrifice. This widely popular scene was well known from Roman civic monuments and may have been painted in the Mithraeum to remind the mystery initiates not to leave their commitment to the civic life of Rome behind. The Mithraeum itself remained in use until the first decade of the fifth century CE when it was filled with rubble. It was during this construction project, which filled the ba
sement space entirely, that the paintings were damaged. A church, dedicated to Saint Prisca, was built on top.

  Because the building constructed on top of the ruins was a Christian worship space, some scholars have inferred that the Mithraeum’s destruction must have been a malicious act – one that attests to the animosity and intolerance of the Christian community on the Aventine towards their Roman neighbors. The contemporary writer Jerome, for example, who was working and writing at exactly the time that the Aventine space was transformed, alludes to a Christian attack on Mithras worshippers in Rome in one of his pieces of correspondence (Jerome, Letter 107). Unfortunately, there is no evidence to connect his letter with the site underneath the church of Saint Prisca; nor is there any indisputable evidence that the Mithraeum was vengefully destroyed. Whoever buried it in the first decades of the fifth century CE may have simply realized that joining a non‐Christian group was not a viable cultural choice anymore, after the Edict of Thessaloniki.

  The church of Saint Prisca itself holds the distinction of being the earliest Christian building on the Aventine Hill, but it was soon joined by other Christian worship spaces. The church of Saint Sabina (built 422–432 CE) was a second. It, too, like the Mithraeum underneath Saint Prisca, preserves an extraordinary example of Roman material culture. At the entrance to Saint Sabina, two large wooden doors were fashioned with scenes from Jesus’ life, stories from Jewish Scripture, and one still puzzling, unidentifiable scene of a gathering of Roman magistrates. These carved panels still stand at the entrance to the church and are one of the Aventine Hill’s most treasured cultural artifacts. One scene, located on the upper reaches of the door, may even be the first piece of Christian material culture to illustrate the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. No crucifixion scene made for a church dates earlier than the first decade of the fifth century CE.

  Funerary banquets on the Via Appia

  The burials in the city center at the Forum of Peace, which date to the sixth century CE, are unique in Rome because the custom of the imperial period was to bury the dead outside the city walls. For that reason, almost all of the roads leading out of Rome during the Republic and Empire were lined with tombs. Many of these were large family tombs, with spaces set aside for the household’s slaves. They could be lined with niches to hold cremated remains; or, for those who desired more overt displays of wealth, they could be lined with finely carved marble burial boxes (in the singular, a sarcophagus).

  On the Via Appia, which led to southern Italy, another kind of burial practice arose during the early empire: interment in a network of subterranean caverns. These caverns were quarried from the local stone, a soft volcanic rock called tufa, and the deceased’s bones would be placed on a shelf carved from the rock. This compartment, or loculus, was then sealed. Hundreds of rows of loculi could be contained in one underground network. Many Christians, non‐Christians, and Jews were buried together in these networks. One catacomb on the Via Appia, at the third Roman milestone, offers a fascinating look at how Christians commemorated their dead in the period before and after Constantine.

  This site on the Via Appia is the location of a fourth‐century church, dedicated to Saint Sebastian. This church is historically and archaeologically important because it was built near a well‐known large tufa quarry, or “cavity” or “cup,” called in Greek a kumbe. The caverns located in the vicinity of this tufa “cavity” were soon being described as lying “next to the cavity,” or in Greek, kata‐kumbas. The subterranean burials at the third milestone on the Via Appia are not the only “catacombs” in the Roman world, but the local geography gave rise to the word which we still use today to refer to these underground tombs.

  The catacombs at Saint Sebastian, on the Via Appia, are important for a second reason. Throughout the year, friends and relatives would visit tombs – whether above ground or below ground – to celebrate the custom of the refrigerium, or funerary meal, by which Romans honored their dead. The area underneath the church of Saint Sebastian has been carefully studied and shows archaeological traces of this practice. In a small space which was once open to the sky, before the fourth‐century church was built on top of it, hundreds of graffiti, scratched on the wall, record the names of visitors who came to the site to partake in honoring the dead. Some of these graffiti make reference to the magistrates or emperors who were ruling Rome at the time, a key detail that has helped archaeologists date the gatherings here. As this evidence makes clear, the people who were coming to celebrate the refrigerium did so during the middle of the third century CE. One set of names explains why the catacomb site of Saint Sebastian is so illustrative for the Christian community specifically.

  All of the testimony left behind by the Christian visitors is dedicated to the memories of “Peter and Paul.” In effect, the archaeology of the catacombs underneath Saint Sebastian shows that Peter and Paul were buried and honored here throughout the third century CE. This tradition does not harmonize with other Christian stories told about the burial of Peter at the Vatican Hill, across the river (Key Debates 8.1: Faith, Texts, Archaeology, and Today: The Example of St. Peter’s Basilica; Figure 8.4); or the burial of Paul, which would later be associated with the Ostian Road. But it does suggest that, just as neighborhoods of Rome could change over time, so, too, could the customs and traditions of the Christian community throughout the city.

  Figure 8.4 This illustration shows St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican in two forms. Below is what archaeologists and architects call a “top‐plan.” It shows a bird’s‐eye view of the burial street, or necropolis, underneath St. Peter’s. The necropolis was in use from the first century to the early fourth century CE. The second view, above, is a longitudinal elevation drawing of the seventeenth‐century church; it shows a view of the site from the perspective of someone standing at ground level. In this drawing, the lowest ground level corresponds to the levels of the first century CE; followed by the fourth century CE; and then the Baroque church. By studying the elevation, archaeologists can better visualize how Constantine’s church of “Old St. Peter’s” demolished the ancient necropolis and how the later construction of “New St. Peter’s” replaced Constantine’s. The burial area marked on the plan by the letter “P” dates to the late second century CE. Plan of the necropolis and longitudinal section of the “Sacre Grotte Vaticane” and Basilica di San Pietro by K. Gaertner. Used with the kind permission of the Fabbrica di San Pietro in Vaticano.

  Key Debates 8.1 Faith, Texts, Archaeology, and Today: The Example of St. Peter’s Basilica

  In 64 CE, in the aftermath of a fire that affected life in ten of the fourteen regions of Rome, Emperor Nero executed several individuals. The site of these executions was the city’s newest sport facility: the Circus of Caligula and Nero. Begun by the Emperor Caligula, also known as Gaius, in 37–41 CE, the track was finished at the beginning of Nero’s rule (54–68 CE). Very little of this race track remains archaeologically. An obelisk, brought from Egypt and used to decorate the spine, still exists. It stands in the center of St. Peter’s Square, Piazza San Pietro.

  When did Nero’s gruesome site became associated with Peter? A team of Baroque architects built the current church over an earlier, fourth‐century one, but what’s buried exactly underneath the fourth‐century church? Excavation has helped clarify the picture.

  Directly beneath St. Peter’s Basilica is a street of Roman tombs. Romans buried their dead here in a necropolis, or “city of the dead,” outside the city center, starting in the first century CE. Then, in the early fourth century, the tombs themselves were “entombed” – during a ground‐raising campaign – so that a new building could be supported on top of the site of the old necropolis. This building was a church dedicated to St. Peter.

  Archaeologists have been able to study the Vatican necropolis to learn more about the burial practices of the Roman world before the rise of Christianity. What they found also sheds light on the Christian development of the site, the center of the Roman Catholic fa
ith today.

  Excavators labeled all the tombs they found underneath the church, starting with A and ending with Z and using Greek letters for the remaining tombs. One of these sites, labeled P on plans, caught archaeologists’ attention. It was a shrine built in front of a brick wall on an open plot of land. This type of shrine is called an “aedicula” shrine because it resembles a “small building.” The brick wall in front of which this aedicula was built was painted red. Archaeologists have given it the unimaginative name: the red wall.

  The shrine in area P by the red wall has become one of the site’s most important, debated features. Based on a comparison of the top‐plan of the necropolis with the location of the Baroque church, one can see why. The red wall is located squarely underneath the altar of St. Peter’s, as though the Baroque church had been designed to preserve the memory of the person buried in area P. The discovery of writing scratched on the red wall, found by an archaeologist working with papal sponsorship in the 1960s, makes the story even more intriguing. Only five letters of this Greek graffito remain visible, but according to one interpreter, it says: “Pet[er is] in[side].” (According to scholarly convention, the square brackets indicate which letters are missing from the ancient text.)