The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (90 page)

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Normans in the South

The Kingdom in the Sun

Mount Athos
(with Reresby Sitwell)

Sahara

A History of Venice

Byzantium: The Early Centuries

Byzantium: The Apogee

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall

The Architecture of Southern England

Fifty Years of Glyndebourne

Shakespeare’s Kings

Paradise of Cities

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Christmas Crackers
, 1970–79

More
Christmas Crackers
, 1980–89

Still More
Christmas Crackers
, 1990–99

FOOTNOTES

¹
See Chapter VI.
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²
Unless of course one was Odysseus; ten years between Troy and Ithaca must, even in his day, have been something of a record.
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³
Though I wish someone would do something about her left eye.
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⁴
In Roman times the Emperor Nero was to pass an edict restricting the wearing of this purple to himself alone. It remained an imperial colour–certain emperors were said to have been ‘born in the purple’–until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, and even today retains something of its old prestige. The principal drawback of the murex industry was the appalling smell that it created; the piles of broken shells were always sited downwind of the town.
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⁵
Odyssey,
Book X.
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⁶
Barely heard of before the end of the nineteenth century, the Hittites are now known to have created a powerful kingdom during the second millennium BC; their civilisation was related, however, more to the Anatolian uplands than to the Mediterranean.
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⁷
The treasure was looted by the Russian army from the Berlin Museum during the Second World War. For many years it was thought to have gone forever–possibly melted down by some Russian soldier. Only recently have the Russians announced that they have it in safe keeping.
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⁸
Self-contradiction, it must be said, is not unknown in modern literature either. All it proves is that Homer had a poor copy-editor.
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⁹
Although the architect Harry Goodhart-Rendel, seeing it after the Second World War for the first time, remarked to Osbert Lancaster, ‘Well, I don’t think we can call it a
complete
success.’
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¹⁰
It was in the Phrygian capital, Gordium, that Alexander was confronted with the Gordian knot, said to have been tied by Gordius, founder of the dynasty, to attach the yoke to the shaft of an ancient farm wagon. According to long tradition, whoever succeeded in unravelling it would become master of Asia. Alexander solved the problem by drawing his sword and slicing it down the middle.
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¹¹
Our modern marathon race of 26 miles, 385 yards is based on the story of the messenger Pheidippides, who is said to have run that distance to carry news of the victory to Athens, but this story is in turn based on a misconception. Herodotus–our only authoritative source-tells us that Pheidippides in fact ran the
140
miles from Athens to Sparta, to seek its help. He is said to have covered the distance in two days.
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¹²
It was one of these satraps, Mausolus, governor of the province of Caria from 377 to 353
BC
, whose sister-wife Artemisia built him the great tomb at Halicarnassus–the Mausoleum that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Its remains were removed in the early fifteenth century by the Knights of St John, to make room for the castle which still dominates the bay, but the great statue of Mausolus survived–more or less–and is now in the British Museum. The stepped tower on which the statue stood inspired Nicholas Hawksmoor when he designed the neighbouring church of St George’s, Bloomsbury (now magnificently restored); here, however, the statue is–rather less appropriately–of George I.
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¹³
Hellenistic
is the word normally applied to the period immediately following the death of Alexander.
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¹⁴
According to Herodotus, the Etruscans had arrived in Italy from Lydia in Asia Minor towards the end of the ninth century
BC
. Their language, which is not even Indo-European, has recently been largely deciphered, but the few Etruscan documents that remain give us all too little information. Much weightier evidence is provided by their surviving works of art-their sculptures (particularly on their tombs), paintings and exquisite jewellery. They were certainly far more gifted artistically than the Romans who expelled them.
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¹⁵
These elephants–and Hannibal’s after them–were presumably African; and African elephants, unlike the Indian variety, are always said to be untamable. Did Pyrrhus and Hannibal know something that we don’t?
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¹⁶
‘Punic’ comes from the Latin
poeni
, which has the same root as ‘Phoenician’.
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¹⁷
This area of western Asia Minor had been bequeathed to Rome in 133
BC
by King Attalus III of Pergamum.
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¹⁸
A Triumph was in essence a formal procession of a victorious Roman general to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. It depended on a special vote of the people, with the additional advice of the Senate. The
triumphator
rode in a four-horse chariot; he was followed by eminent captives (probably destined for execution), freed Roman prisoners of war, the major spoils captured, the army and finally animals for sacrifice.
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¹⁹
I use the word loosely and with a small ‘t’; though the three have often been dubbed ‘the First Triumvirate’, they were never so described at the time.
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²⁰
Pompeia had been in charge of the rites of the
Bona Dea
. This goddess was worshipped in an annual service held at night, from which men were strictly excluded. In December 62
BC
, one Publius Clodius Pulcher slipped in disguised as a woman–it was said in order to approach Pompeia in her husband’s absence. Caesar, who liked Clodius, stoutly proclaimed the innocence of both, but divorced Pompeia anyway on the grounds that she ‘must be above suspicion’.
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²¹
It was in the following year, and again in 54
BC
, that he invaded Britain, staying there for eighteen days and three months respectively. He achieved little, however, except a show of strength; Britain was to have almost a century’s grace before the Romans returned.
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²²
Surprisingly, this stream has never been certainly identified. The modern river Pisciatello is the most likely candidate.
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²³
According to Suetonius, Caesar was so pleased with this remark that he had it emblazoned on a banner for his subsequent Triumph in Rome.
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²⁴
It is hardly surprising that the most common Latin name for the Mediterranean was
mare nostrum
, ‘our sea’. No previous power had ever been in a position to make such a claim; nor has any been able to do so since.
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²⁵
King Herod is known to have died in 4
BC
.
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²⁶
The English title is misleading. The Latin one,
Carmina
(‘Songs’), is a much better description of what are essentially lyrics.
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²⁷
This sublime work, found in 1887 in the necropolis of Sidon, is thought to have been intended for the body of the city’s last king, Abdalonymous, who was appointed by Alexander in 332
BC
. On its sides are representations of Alexander himself, in peace and at war.
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²⁸
‘It is not easy,’ he adds, ‘to express his vices with dignity, or even decency.’
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²⁹
Such is the inspired phrase of Philemon Holland, translating Suetonius in 1606.
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³⁰
Gibbon again: from the first sentence of
The Decline and Fall.
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³¹
All his life Hadrian was mocked for his Spanish accent.
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³²
It is said to have been an inspiration to–of all people–Cecil Rhodes.
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³³
A Byzantine province extending from the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus along the southern coast of the Black Sea.
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³⁴
In 307 Constantine had put away his first wife to marry Maximian’s daughter Faustina.
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³⁵
The old bridge still stands. It has been restored many times, but much of its original second-century fabric remains.
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³⁶
De Vita Constantini,
I, 28. The story is not quite as straightforward as it sounds; another version by the scholar Lactantius raises a number of intriguing points. I have gone into the matter a good deal more fully in
Byzantium: The Early Centuries
, pp. 38–43.
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³⁷
Licinius was married to Constantine’s half-sister Constantia.
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³⁸
Acts, i, 18.
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³⁹
The scene is most enjoyably portrayed in Verdi’s opera
Attila
–despite the fact that Pope Leo is disguised–as was required by the censorship–as ‘an old Roman’.
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⁴⁰
After its destruction in 146
BC
, Carthage had remained virtually deserted for over a century, until in 29
BC
Augustus made it the capital of his Roman province of Africa.
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⁴¹
Sometimes known as Odovacar. He was a Scyrian, member of an obscure Germanic tribe which will not trouble us again.
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⁴²
To take but one example: ‘Often in the theatre…she would spread herself out and lie on her back on the ground. And certain slaves whose special task it was would sprinkle grains of barley over her private parts; and geese trained for the purpose would pick them off one by one with their beaks and swallow them…’
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⁴³
From the early sixth century, the title of Patriarch was accorded to the bishops of the five chief sees of Christendom: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem. (The Bishop of Rome, being Pope, seldom if ever used it.) In more recent times the title has also been given to the heads of certain autocephalous Orthodox Churches (Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia) and also–in view of the city’s historical associations with Byzantium–to the Bishop of Venice.
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⁴⁴
He had by then already built the ravishingly beautiful little church of St Sergius and St Bacchus, just below the southern end of the Hippodrome, which was to provide the model for his magnificent S. Vitale in Ravenna. It is now a mosque known as Little St Sophia–
Küçük Ayasofya Camii
.
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⁴⁵
The smallest type of Byzantine warship, designed for lightness and speed, with a crew of about twenty oarsmen.
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⁴⁶
The Emperor’s attitude towards Belisarius was always ambivalent. Jealousy obviously played its part, but so did suspicion. Despite countless proofs of loyalty given by the general, Justinian never quite trusted him. Robert Graves’s novel
Count Belisarius
–which is well worth reading for its insight into their two lives–is particularly interesting in this connection.
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⁴⁷
E. M. Forster tells us that Amr was ‘an administrator, a delightful companion, and a poet–one of the ablest and most charming men that Islam ever produced’. He goes on to tell a lovely story of how, when Amr lay on his deathbed, ‘a friend said to him: “You have often remarked that you would like to find an intelligent man at the point of death, and to ask him what his feelings were. Now I ask
you
that question.” Amr replied, “I feel as if the heaven lay close upon the earth and I between the two, breathing through the eye of a needle.”’
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⁴⁸
The theory, however, that the Muslims were responsible for the destruction of the great library is almost certainly without foundation. Everything we know about Amr suggests that he would have treated it with immense respect.
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⁴⁹
The first of the two great Arab empires of the Middle Ages: the Umayyad, based in Damascus, which lasted from 661 to 750, and the Abbasid, based in Baghdad, which continued until its destruction by the Mongols in 1258.
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⁵⁰
The rock was known to the Arabs as Jebel al-Tariq (Mount Tariq), whence comes its modern name of Gibraltar.
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