N.S.Gill's Ancient History Blog

OhmyNews' Clay Bulla Documents Biblical Hebrew King: 2,600-year-old clay impression distinctly names court adviser to King Zedekiah reports on the discovery of a piece of clay with the impression from a seal attesting to someone mentioned in the Biblical Book of Jeremiah. This is the second excavated clay bulla with the name of this court advisor to King Zedekiah, Gedaliah ben Pashur. Archaeologists found the first bulla in what is believed to be King David's palace. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar put Zedekiah on the throne at Jerusalem.

See List of Important Biblical People You Should Know

Sack of Rome in 410 by Alaric the King of the Goths. Miniature from 15th Century.
Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

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More on Alaric and the Sack of Rome by the Goths

Loebs have been a tremendous boon for students of ancient Greek and Latin with one page in the original language and their facing page in English. Now Sanskrit students will have a similar set of tools, the Clay editions of ancient Sanskrit documents, including the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In The New Republic's The Arrow and the Poem, David Shulman says that more than 30 volumes have already been produced in this series named for a benefactor who studied Sanskrit at Oxford a while back. The Sanskrit is transliterated into Roman characters. Not only will this be a boon to Sanskrit students, but the translations into English will offer non-Sanskrit readers the opportunity to read the original in a palatable form -- something earlier translations were not:

...most of the new volumes do succeed in conveying--for the first time in English--something of the toughness and the elegance of Sanskrit at its best.

The Mahabharata is an enormous undertaking and when finished the Clay edition will be the first time it has been completely translated into readable English. It is considered dangerous:

...Indian tradition tells us that the text is so powerful, and potentially so destructive, that is positively dangerous to attempt to translate it, or even to read it, from beginning to end. Copies of the work are often kept outside the house, on a porch or in some other relatively safe repository, lest it set the home on fire.

On this day in ancient Roman history, the first Roman emperor, Augustus, died.

"In August A.D. 14, while on a night journey by ship, he caught a chill and died on the 19th, at age 75, at Nola [in Campania]. The Augustan Age was truly over."
Augustus - End to an Era

Also on this day, the ancient Romans celebrated the Vinalia. There was an earlier wine festival in April, Vinalia urbana, but on August 19, it was the Vinalia rustica. This was when Romans opened wine casks sealed the previous fall. Read more about the Vinalia.

_{Augustus picture © Clipart.com}

In 260 B.C. a temple was built to Janus by C. Duilius after a naval victory over the Carthaginians in the First Punic War. The dedication date was changed during the Imperial period to October 18. Just as the date changed, so did the image of Janus when, somewhat later, under Domitian, the two-faced god was depicted having four faces looking at four Roman forums.

The most commonly mentioned temple of Janus is not this one, which was located in the Vegetable Forum (Forum Holitorium), but the Janus (Geminus) -- technically, shrine -- on the Argiletum. Ronald Syme describes this shrine as

Not a temple, and barely a shrine, but originally a passage: two arched gates with double doors, joined by lateral walls to form a rectangle.
"Problems about Janus," by Ronald Syme. The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 100, No. 1, Tekmhpion. A Special Issue in Honor of James Henry Oliver (Spring, 1979), pp. 188-212

[See Forum map showing the Forum Holitorium, Forum Boarium, Argiletum, the Janus (Geminus) shrine, and more.] It was that shrine that had the famous war gateway, with doors that closed in times of peace.

Usually, Janus is shown with two faces, both bearded, as in this illustration. Sometimes one is bearded and one clean-shaven, and sometimes there are four faces.

Read more on Janus.

Photo © Clipart.com

In Colossal Head of Roman Empress Unearthed, the Archaeological Institute of America released the information (from August 12, 2008) that archaeologists had identified a 2.5' (.76 m) head of Faustina, the wife of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, who preceded Marcus Aurelius as emperor. Marc Waelkens leads the archaeological team in the ancient Greco-Roman city of Sagalassos, in modern Turkey. They had found a colossal statue of Hadrian in the Roman baths there a year ago. That statue is the centerpiece of a current exhibit on Hadrian at the British Museum.

Photo of The Battle of Actium Painting by Lorenzo A. Castro (1672).

In 29 B.C., the first Roman Emperor, whom we call Augustus (although the Senate didn't give the name Augustus to Octavian until the beginning of 27 B.C.), celebrated a triple triumph. On each of three days he celebrated his victories, Illyria, Actium and Alexandria, with the biggest, Egyptian victory on the final day. August 14 was the second day and it celebrated the victory at the naval Battle of Actium in which Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by Octavian's forces led by Agrippa. Actium was part of a Roman civil war, but Roman triumphs were supposed to celebrate victories over foreign forces, so the victory over fellow-Roman Antony was played down.

Read more about:

• Mary Beard's Roman Triumph
• Battle of Actium
• Agrippa
• Roman Triumphs

antmoose - Flickr Creative Commons License
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This day, which we call August 13, was the ides of the sixth month of the Roman calendar from before the time when the month was re-named August in honor of Augustus. It was a day in honor of the goddess Diana and "involved a general day's holiday for all slaves," according to H.H.Scullard in Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic.
The connection between Diana and slaves comes from the fact that her temple was used as a sanctuary for runaway slaves. It was also a day for women to wash their hair.
August Calendar

In 490, after the Greek cities of Eretria and Athens had sent help to the Ionian cities, the Persians, retaliating, made their first attempt to conquer mainland Greeks. After Eretria was surrendered to the Persians, its inhabitants were enslaved.

Next came Marathon. Sent by Darius, the Persians under Artaphernes and Datis, who had landed in Marathon Bay, were defeated by a much smaller number of Athenian and Plataean hoplites under the general Miltiades and the polemarch Callimachus. The Greeks used the large number of the Persians to their advantage by surrounding them on three sides and then squeezing them together.

• Battle of Marathon
• Hoplite
• Accomplishments of Darius