Читать книгу The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya, Final Reports, Volume VIII - Donald O. White - Страница 14

I: PART 1

Background to the Early Imperial Period

The standard analyses of the province’s historical development from the time of Augustus and his dynastic successors until the A.D. 115 outbreak of the Jewish Rebellion emphasize how, notwithstanding periodic clashes with native tribal elements from the Syrtic Gulf area, this was an interval of relatively sustained peace and stability within the borders of the region¹⁷ On the other hand, the prosperous material conditions which theoretically should have prevailed during the 1st c. A.D. for the most part find only a lackluster reflection in Cyrenaican architecture¹⁸ and, to an even lesser extent, in the region’s sculptural output¹⁹ Understandably, in light of the battery of circumstances that can affect their distribution, survival, and modern recovery, coins can be counted on to provide an even less reliable picture, most notoriously those extracted from excavation sites including our own; but according to the available evidence, the production of coinage undergoes a sharp reduction at this time²⁰ It therefore seems accurate to say that it remains the ancient literary records²¹ supplemented by the region’s slowly expanding body of inscriptions^,22 which leave us with the bulk of our historically useful information about the province during the century and a half preceding the rebellion. The portrait which these sources combine to create is one of a region for the most part benefit-ting from Roman rule but at a level which falls well short of brilliant.

As far as Cyrene goes, the more noteworthy architectural contributions for this period would have to include its newly constructed Gymnasium-Caesareum complex,²³ the agora’s Augusteum²⁴ and rededicated Portico B5,²⁵ the Trajanic Baths,²⁶ and the extensive modifications carried out on the two temples dedicated to its principal gods, Apollo²⁷ and Zeus.²⁸ While nearly all mirror in various ways the impact of the province’s imperial administration, none can be said to break fresh ground as architecture. In a generalized way, this conforms to the situation said to prevail throughout much of the Greek world starting in the last decades of the 1st c. B.C. Thus we see in the opinion of one scholar how, “by a neat irony, the lifetime of Jesus coincided with a temporary low point in the shrines and externals of much pagan worship.”²⁹

More to the point, the sponsors, designers and builders of Cyrene’s monuments appear to be almost complacently oblivious to the ways in which concrete and brick construction were elsewhere revolutionizing building practices through arch, vault, and dome applications. Concrete and vault-dependent multiple terrace solutions, already strongly in place by the later 2nd c. B.C. in the West,³⁰ and the impressive scenographic effects still being achieved in stone during the first century and a half of imperial rule in the Roman East³¹ are for the most past alien to this provincial landscape. To cite merely a single technical development among many, the Forum Iulium’s Venus Genetrix Temple at Rome introduces the half-domed apse as the setting for the god’s statue³² and which is later to house the living emperor or his image. But this architectural invention finds no echo in Pentapolis building practices much before the Byzantine period. Perhaps the one exception to this widespread regional disinterest in vaults is provided by regional bridge and water storage projects.

One could continue in this vein to the evident disadvantage of the local architectural tradition. Seen from another angle, however, the strengths of the region could be equally well argued to lie precisely in its conservatism, which is perhaps best expressed in a continuing mastery of cut stone³³ in the Doric idiom³⁴ combined with a persistent reuse of time-tested building forms. Seen in this light, Synesios’s centuries-later crankish boast of personal descent from Eurysthenes³⁵ simply may be giving us a valuable glimpse into what was once a broad-based, deeply embedded cultural bias.

Another factor to be weighed into consideration is the region’s isolated geographic position. The upland gebel zone is seriously landlocked by formidable deserts on three of its four sides.³⁶ Although the southern tip of Laconia is only half as far from Cyrene as Alexandria, travel over the open sea remained a greater impediment to cultural exchange than coastal seafaring and movement by land despite their attendant risks. Where external influence on Cyrenaican architecture can be detected during the period under review, it inevitably comes from the east and especially Alexandria, which had remained culturally as well as politically joined at the hip with Pentapolis since the days of Magas.

Sjöqvist and Ward-Perkins saw specific reflections of this relationship in Alexandria’s lost Kaisareion, as well as the Ptolemaic pre-basilica complex at Hermopolis Magna, and in the layout of the Cyrene Caesareum complex.³⁷ Stucchi has proposed the Pharos at Alexandria as the archetype for the striking vertical elevation of Ptolemais’s Mausoleum No. 2 (“Tomb of the Pharaoh”),³⁸ while at the same time pointing out similarities between Alexandrian hypogeum burials “a peristilio di casa” and a number of Cyrene rock-cut burials.³⁹ Wright argues for the influence of Alexandria on Ptolemais’s urban domestic villas, echoes of which also may be seen in the layouts of Alexandria’s hypogeum tombs at Sidi Gaber and Anfushy.⁴⁰ The Alexandrian foot unit of 0.365 m. has been documented in a number of buildings in Ptolemais and Cyrene, including, so it would seem, the sanctuary’s own S7 Sacred House.⁴¹ It scarcely needs to be added how commentators from Pesce onward have regarded Ptolemais’ Palazzo delle colonne—in which, incidentally, the excavators found three pieces of Egyptian sculpture⁴²—as a “Musterbeispiel of domestic architecture in the Alexandrine manner.”⁴³

As we shall presently see, during its 31 B.C.–A.D. 115 development, the Demeter and Persephone Sanctuary rising on the south slope of Wadi Bel Gadir (P1. 1) did gain a number of fresh architectural additions as well as modifications to already existing features. Paralleling the situation just noted elsewhere in the city, two sanctuary sculptural dedications honoring members of the Julio-Claudian family⁴⁴ may have stemmed from tangible benefits directly conferred on the twin goddesses’ cult by the imperial government (not, however, otherwise confirmed) or by wealthier practitioners finding themselves, for whatever reason, the benefi-ciaries of Roman rule. An example of the latter may be M. Romanius Epulo, whose dedicatory inscription paying homage to Ceres Augusta was found by the Department of Antiquities in the area of the Lower Sanctuary in the winter of 1987/88.⁴⁵ In addition, we can assume, on the analogy with the cult of Apollo,⁴⁶ that the sanctuary must have gone on receiving financial support from revenues drawn from temple estates as well as from taxes levied against locally produced agricultural products.⁴⁷ Whatever the causes, the net result is that the early Roman-era sanctuary grew substantially larger than its predecessors.

Plate 1. Photomontage of the extramural Wadi Bel Gadir area surrounding the Demeter and Persephone sanctuary, taken by David Hopkins in the summer of 2007, 29 years after the latter’s final clearance by the University of Pennsylvania.

Before detailing this phase, it may be useful to summarize the previous developments described earlier in the fifth volume of this series.⁴⁸ The patchily preserved late 7th century B.C. archetype consisted of an open-air terrace apparently subdivided by rubble peribolos walls into two unequal parts.A two-or perhaps three-room naiskos was backed against the rear precinct wall to face away from the city. By the late 6th, early 5th B.C. century the goddesses’ sacred precinct had grown to include upper and lower terraces, defined by well-built pseudoisodomic peribolos walls. The rising bedrock across the lower zone housed three small ashlar-constructed naiskoi or sacred houses; the upper level accommodated a partially preserved rectangular room complex (S2-S4) of still unidentified purpose.

While essentially retaining the double-tiered layout of earlier times (now accessed by stairs), in the Hellenistic phase the number of independent sacred houses increased to four, and a couple of storage rooms and two fountain installations were added.

At this point, the obvious steps left to be undertaken were to expand farther down the slope, formalize access to both the bottom and top levels, and finally, to create a focus for the entire complex in the form of some kind of large, climactic structure.

17. Romanelli 1943, 67–103; Goodchild 1963, 19–21; Goodchild 1971, 38–41; Applebaum 1979, 202–15; Stucchi 1975, 195–96; Laronde 1988, 1015 passim; Lloyd 1989, 77 passim; Bonacasa and Ensoli 2000, 23–25. The principal exceptions arose from attacks mounted by the native element, mainly the Marmarides and Nasamones, whose suppression required interventions on the part of the imperial administration: Laronde 1988, 1020–22.

18. Boëthius and Ward-Perkins 1970, 462: “Roman Cyrenaica, unlike Egypt, was a poor province, richer in history than it was in fine contemporary monuments… there are few Roman buildings that are more than local significance.”

19. Thus Walker 1994, 182: “The marginal nature of Cyrene as a centre for early imperial sculpture belies the evidence for building activity in the early years of the first century A.D.” That said, meaningful data is difficult to come by. Traversari 1960, 109, attributes 19 of his draped female statues to the Augustan-Trajanic period, compared to 13 belonging to the Hadrianic-Severan times and 11 to the late Hellenistic era; in other words a respectable 25% out of a total of 43 pieces. On the other hand, Rosenbaum 1960 catalogues some 259 portraits which date after Trajan but assigns a mere 19 pieces to the Augustan-Trajanic period; to these can be added 6 Julio-Claudian family sculptures found in 1989: Walker 1994, 167–84. This leaves Cyrene’s pre-Hadrianic Roman portraits to account for only ca. 0.08% of the total Roman period output. For various reasons, neither Paribeni 1959 nor Huskinson 1975 can contribute to this kind of cursory analysis.

20. Robinson 1927, ccix: “For Cyrene a quickly diminishing coinage somewhat on the imperial model was issued by the Roman governors: this died out before the end of the century, except for an isolated outburst under Tiberius.” In the case of the sanctuary’s coins, of the 821 specimens catalogued by Buttrey, only 4 Roman period issues belong to the years before the reign of Hadrian, and 1 of these pre-dates Augustus. See Buttrey in Buttrey and McPhee 1998, 7, 30.

21. This despite Reynolds’ reminder that “all the surviving literary sources provide a fitful guide to the history of Roman Cyrenaica under Roman rule.” Reynolds 1968, 181.

22. Stucchi 1975, 643–49. Summarized by Laronde 1988, passim but see in particular 1015–18, 1024–28, 1061. See also Reynolds 1989, 119–21; Reynolds 1994, 211–17; Reynolds 1996, 259–64; Gasperini 1996, 154–56.

23. Its title of Caesareum has been assigned to either the time of the dictator or the reign of Vespasian. In either case, a connection to Rome is implicit. See Stucchi 1975, 204nn5, 6, and 206n6. Bonacasa and Ensoli 2000, 91–96.

24. Stucchi 1975, 196n5; Bonacasa and Ensoli 2000, 74–75. For the inscriptions honoring the imperial family, see Stucchi 1965, 211–15.

25. For its epistyle inscription mentioning Augustus, see Stucchi 1965, 177nn1, 2. Stucchi 1975, 120n1.

26. Stucchi 1975, 211n3, 212. For the inscription attributing the complex to Trajan’s proconsul, C. Memmius, see Goodchild 1971, 130n23.

27. Dated to after A.D. 68 by a marble pilaster base inscribed with the names of the priests of Apollo. Stucchi 1961, 70–71n90; Stucchi 1975, 196n8, 197; Bonacasa and Ensoli 2000, 120–21.

28. The repairs are attributed to the intervention of Augustus or Tiberius. Goodchild et al. 1958, 35–39; Bonacasa and Ensoli 2000, 137–45, esp. 140.

29. Lane Fox 1989, 74–75.

30. The locus classicus being the Fortuna Primigenia sanctuary at Praeneste. Kähler 1970, 35, fig. 1, pls. 13–15; Boëthius and Ward-Perkins 1970, 140–46, figs. 77–79, pl. 84.

31. E.g., Baalbek’s Jupiter Heliopolitanus complex, and Gerasa’s A.D. 70 Zeus temenos with its magnificent rising stairs and portico forecourt. On a smaller scale, there is the late 1st century A.D. temple enclosure at Kalat Fakra in Lebanon. Boëthius and Ward-Perkins 1970, 425, 436.

32. Boëthius and Ward-Perkins 1970, 228–29; Kähler 1970, fig. 6; Richardson 1992, 165–67. I am assuming that the apse containing the cult statue by Arkesilas was integral to the 54 B.C. Caesarian design rather than to its Domitianic-Trajanic restoration. If, however, the latter is true, the earliest use of the apse cum half dome to house the cult statue in Rome, at least, may be Augustus’s 2 B.C. Mars Ultor.

33. White and Wright 1998, 28–29.

34. Just how anachronistic the use of Doric for both temples has become by this time is suggested by the overall dimensions and the 6 by 11 columnar layout. The closest analogy to the Apollo Temple, which measures ca. 19.5 by 35 m., is the ca. 321 B.C. Temple of Zeus at Stratos, which measures 16.57 by 32.42 m. Dinsmoor 1950, 339. In the case of the Augustan period repairs carried out on the Zeus Temple, an effort was made to reproduce the late Archaic, early Classical members in the spirit of a modern restoration. The work involved “…the provision of new columns on at least the east side of the peristasis, together with modifications to the columns of the pronaos and opisthodomos.” This in turn required handling exterior capitals, whose weight Goodchild estimated ran 14 tons. Goodchild et al. 1958, 41, 62.

35. The Heraclid who brought Dorians into Sparta. Synesios, Epp. 57 and 113 and Catastasis 5.303A. Goodchild 1976, 240; Bregman 1982, 3n4, 18n4, 63, 169n21.

36. See White andWright 2005, 21 for more on this point.

37. Sjöqvist 1954, 86–104; Wace et al. 1959, 4–11, pls. 2, 3. Boëthius and Ward-Perkins 1970, 122, 459–60; Stucchi 1975, 204nn5, 6.

38. Kraeling 1962, 9–10, 113–15; Stucchi 1987, 292–94.

39. Stucchi 1975, 155ff.

40. Kraeling 1962, 216.

41. White 1993, 163n114.

42. Kraeling 1962, 9: “As such they are not unimportant, for they attest the presence in that city of persons, especially officials, from Egypt.”

43. Kraeling’s phrase. See Kraeling and Wright in Kraeling 1962, 9n42; 85–86; Boëthius and Ward-Perkins 1970, 462–63.

44. If not, he is not portraying a local man adopting the imperial hairstyle; the first is the mutilated velate head of a male member of the Julio-Claudian family. Kane no. 145 was found a short distance to the east of Sacred House S8: White 1971a, 189–90, pl. 85, c. White et al. 1992, 80, fig. 5. Split vertically in two, its surviving half is insufficient to allow a secure identification. The second is the marble statue base, Kane no. 682, that evidently carried a bronze statue honoring Octavia Augusta; it was found to the southeast of Sacred House S5, north of the peribolos wall T1; White 1972–1973, 185nn69–70, pl. 79, a. Its inscription, Reynolds no. A.26, echoes the inscriptions on the inner wall of the Agora’s Augusteum, honoring Apollo Augustus and Diana Livia, as well as another female member of the royal family linked with either Latona, Minerva, or Ceres; Stucchi 1965, 212–13n1; Laronde 1988, 1037, 1040–41. This parallels the situation at Ephesos; during the reign of Tiberius, the priestess of Livia was named Augusta Demeter; Ferguson 1970, 93.

45. Reynolds 1994, 211–17, fig. 3; Kane 1998, 297, Reynolds no. A.28. The inscription reads: “To Ceres Augusta in fulfillment of a vow. M. Romanius Epulo, son of Servius, tribe of Voltinia, Promagister of the company for public revenue in Cyrenaica.”

46. Information, inscriptional and otherwise, available for the Roman period cult of Apollo is more plentiful than what exists for Demeter’s. Romanelli 1943, 90, 210–13; Laronde 1988, 1034–36. Temple estate revenue for Apollo’s cult, first recorded in the 5th century B.C., is epigraphically attested for the reigns of Augustus, Nero, Trajan, and Hadrian as well as later. Applebaum 1979, 72nn450–54. SEG 9.4; 9.75; 9.101; 9.171; 9.74–75.

47. White 1985, 115–16.

48. This summary also can be found in White et al. 1992, 6–14 and in White 2008.