Cymon and Iphigenia (1884) by Sir Frederic Leighton (British, 1830 – 1896), oil on canvas, 163 cm × 328 cm (64 in × 129 in), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
A post to say goodbye to all the medieval notaries and chancellors, librarians and judges, laymen and clergymen, who accompanied me for many months of my life. Nothing of their lives survived to us, nothing of their faces or voices, but nevertheless we still preserve the fruits of their labour, the memory of their daily work, their handwriting and, most importantly, their names; and this way we can know they have walked on the same earth as us.
1) "Ego Ansolf notarius" - "I, Ansolf, notary" (720 AD)
2) "Ego Gerardus notarius scriptor" - "I, Gerardus, notary and writer" (1101 AD)
3) "Ego Ingelfredus nottarius [sic] sacri pala[cii]" - "I, Ingelfredus, notary of the Sacred Palace" (999 AD)
4) "Bruno cancellarius Sacri Palacii vice Aribonis Mogunciensis archiepiscopi" - "Bruno, chancellor of the Sacred Palace, vicar of Aribo archbishop of Mainz" (1030 AD)
5) "Per manus Frederici diaconi Sanctae Romanae Aecclesiae bibliothecarii" - "At the hand of Fredericus deacon of the Holy Roman Church, librarian" (1051 AD)
6) "Et ego Petrus sacro sancte romane ecclesie auctor notarius" - "And I, Petrus, author for the Holy Roman Church and notary" (1261 AD)
In the tenth year of Justinian’s reign, the sun lost its brightness and shone like the moon, as though perpetually eclipsed. From that moment, humanity knew no relief from war, famine, or pestilence. The plague followed soon after, spreading across the whole world without regard for age, rank, or place, bringing mankind to the edge of annihilation.
-Procopius on the Years following 536AD
From the summit of the Palatium Magnum, Justinian the Great looked out upon the city as the greatest temple to the one true God was completed. The Hagia Sophia stood as the summit of Roman achievement, a monument so grand that Justinian himself proclaimed to have surpassed Solomon. The agents of hell had tried and failed to destroy Justinian. He had endured the Nika Riots. Attila, the Scourge of God, had arrived and been driven back to distant lands. And now on the evening of victory over the Goths and Vandals, Justinian raised monuments across the empire to reclaim the ancient heartlands of Rome. To Justinian, it appeared as though Heaven itself had broken into the material world.
Then came the year 536. The sun lost its brightness and for an entire year it gave forth no warmth or heat, and neither spring nor summer ever arrived. Crops failed in the fields, harvests died on the vine, and famine spread across Rome. Even when the sun returned in the following years, its light remained dimmed, and the earth lingered forever in cold.
In his reflections, the historian Procopius remarked that from this moment onward mankind was never to be free of war, pestilence, or death. As hunger stalked the empire, the conditions for a far deadlier hell to break loose.
In 541, a mysterious disease appeared, starting in Egypt and quickly spreading through the Roman world. It wasn’t long before it reached Constantinople. This new death spared neither island nor mountain, rich or poor. Neither young nor old. This disease was described simply as an apparition that visited those marked for death. And then, the sickness came. First, a fever, then painful swellings rose in the armpits, ears and neck. Some fell into deep comas others seized by violent delirium, fleeing their homes in terror, crying out that the unseen apparition had come.
Blackened flesh spread across limbs. Carbuncles formed within the swellings. Some vomited blood other suffered as the black pustules would explode. As the population became overwhelmed with death, corpses lay unburied in the streets. Tombs were forced open to make room for more. Physicians were helpless. Treatments that saved some killed others. Many who were expected to die recovered, while those thought safe were smit without warning. And in the terror, mankind came to accept that there was no human reasoning in this pandemonium—only the terrible hand of God.
Wave after wave of death buckled the empire until nearly forty percent of the Roman population was lost. This Black Death broke Rome, the same Rome whose walls of Constantinople rebuffed Attila; whose armies crushed Persians, Goths and Vandals; whose lordship regaled as the heir of Caesar and Augustus. And Justinian the Great, whose monuments of glory now stood as an irony to fate, like Job before him, was brought low. Justinian’s dream of a restored Rome did not die in battle…it froze in the darkened years following 536AD. The long winter and the plague bled Constantinople, emptying her cities and hollowing out the economies. The Imperial state collapsed along with the Legions. What Justinian had nearly reclaimed through blood and steel was forever lost. While the old wolf of Rome endured it was permanently diminished. The Mediterranean world irreparably fractured. Between the darkened winter skies and diseased mass graves, the last true vision of a reunited Roman world quietly came to an end.
Sources:
Lost to the West; Lars Brownworth
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire; Kyle Harper
out of context quotes from my epigraphy prof.'s course on late antiquity
"The Colosseum is an organism that digests itself"
[pointing at a honorary inscription from the v century] "So what do you think?" [silence] "you can say it's ugly. I mean, in the I century not even a freedman would have accepted something this ugly"
"No, the Colosseum is like pork: you don't throw anything away."
[two inscriptions about the same thing done by the same guy] "Yet they are a bit different - why? That's late antiquity for you, baby"
[about a scholar who was horribly wrong] "This happens when you don't let the stone speak"
[pointing at a few inscriptions that mentioned barbarian attacks] "They simply have no shame anymore, don't they?"
"We might say that Constantine was the inventor of politically correct- well, no, actually, this would be true if Augustus hadn't come before him"
"Here's a thing that Donald Trump's political campaign, augustean propaganda and Constantine's arch have in common"
[still on Constantine. this time the hispellum rescriptum] "It took him 38 lines to actually answer and say: yeah it's cool"
"Constantine introduced himself as Rome's new founder - he had that old-fashioned problem of killing his family members - however..."
"Fashion changes. They liked inscriptions that we would have probably given back to their maker because of their ugliness. Look at this one. Yes it's whole. Yes they didn't even cut it right."
[about Colosseum's shows] "At noon there were public executions. A great background to have lunch to"
of course ! basically what we nowadays have of the colosseum brings us back to the last phase of use of the amphitheater. not much of its original state is preserved because many materials of its early stages were reused for inscriptions, architectural structures and equipment during late roman empire. so most of the original colosseum is forever lost to the colosseum itself, because the amphiteater is, in my professor’s words, like “a microcosm that grew digesting itself”.
this practice of reusing older material and inscriptions is a rather interesting trait that characterises the epigraphical landscape of that age, but it’s extremely striking in the case of the colosseum.
there are slices of columns reused for loca senatorii (inscriptions in the cavea that marked the place where certain aristocratic families used to sit), steps and bleachers transformed into blocks of imperial inscriptions that circled the arena, and even inscriptions themselves turned into building material during the various restorations of the building
this, for example, is a fragment of an imperial inscription from the time of valentinian III that reuses a former bleacher (the holes have been probably made by spectators to play with marbles while waiting between different shows)
here you can see how inside (in its maenianum summum) the structure is almost a "patchwork" of different materials.
Helping The Hanging Man To Die, after a drawing by Gustave Doré for Gargantua and Pantagruel, from Life And Reminiscences of Gustave Doré, published in 1885.
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