The recent discovery, beneath the Roman Emperor Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, of a subterranean jigsaw of tunnels and roads, has scholars and tweeters alike aflutter. Some describe this as no less than a chthonic city; others have suggested the network could stretch as far as the Eternal City itself, more than 28 kilometres to the west. The presence of paved, underground streets wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic of ox-drawn carts and passages so slim that only the merest slip of a slave girl might squeeze through posits the possibility of a pallid community of slaves in this sun-drenched region of Latium. Subhumans condemned to a troglodyte existence, shifting supplies so their wine-swilling masters above could be served, invisibly. The Tivoli Villa has long been described as Hadrian’s “summer retreat.” Yet the Spanish-born Publius Aelius Hadrianus governed close on one-fifth of the earth from a purpose-built council chamber here. When not in Tivoli, Hadrian restlessly prowled the limits of his empire — withdrawing the Roman army from Mesopotamia; renaming Jerusalem Aelia; invigorating tax collection in Mauretania and book production in Athens. He tested and defined the very limits of Roman control; Hadrian’s Wall (Vallum Aelium as it was known in its day) was a clever bit of propaganda — a boundary with taxation points, and a boundary so far within the real limits of empire (Romans operated well beyond the Firth of Forth), it was never likely to be breached. Tivoli became an architectural aide-mémoire of Hadrian’s strategic globe-trotting: canals and grottoes named after Egyptian sites; Greek caryatids lining up next to the North African silenus Bes; a copy of the Athenian bronze sculpture “the discus-thrower” — now in the British Museum. All ancient societies rose on the sweat of vast slave populations. In Ancient Athens slaves outnumbered citizens three to one. Bronze Age Hittite tablets boast of the capture of 15,000 souls at one time — all destined for life-enslavement. Yet in “typical” Roman settlements such as Pompeii and Herculaneum, slaves lived cheek-by-jowl with their masters; manumissions were commonplace. Come the second century AD, emperors seem to need to perpetuate the lie of their omnipotence — in Hadrian’s case, by keeping the slave-engine of empire out of sight and out of mind. Source: theprovince/life/Cave+explorers+find+ancient+slave+world+beneath+Roman+Emperor/8844996/story.html Imperfectly perfect
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 12:34:18 +0000
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