|
Very little (non-fiction) has been written about the Visigothic king Alaric who, in August AD 410, led an army into the heart of Rome and set about ransacking it. Unfortunately, Alaric was to die suddenly before he managed to transport the loot out of Italy and, according to legend, was hastily buried, along with some of the treasure. Unsurprisingly, there have been many attempts to find this secret burial, from the medieval period to the present day, but the story is without closure. Daniel Costa’s new book The Lost Gold of Rome: The Hunt for Alaric’s Treasure is much more than the story of this treasure hunt. Rather, he seeks to learn more about Alaric, his early life and the early migration of Gothic tribes into the fringes of the western empire. This, he sets against the malaise of social, political and economic upheaval in Rome, its vulnerability to attack, and the discord between its people, between Romans and non-Romans and between Christians and pagans. Turning on the empire that had once given them shelter, the Goths led by Alaric besieged and subsequently plundered Rome, feeding on the riches accrued by the fat cats of Rome. Although this did not signal the end of the Roman Empire, Costa argues that this was an act that highlighted Rome’s weaknesses, frailty and the decay that had set in.
The cause of Alaric’s death is not known but it is clear that a secret, well-hidden burial was required since his army were not intending to return. Piecing together evidence on the likely nature and location of Alaric’s burial, Costa examines the tradition of early Germanic princely burials with their emphasis on displaying the wealth and social status of the deceased both at the funeral and, perhaps more importantly, in the afterlife. The final discussion in the book focuses on those that have sought to find the burial, from late medieval historians to 19th and early 20th century archaeologists and even Hitler who sent Himmler to find the tomb in an attempt to link himself with Alaric, the bold hero who achieved glory and notoriety through an epic struggle.
In Catharine Edwards’ new book Death in Ancient Rome, she devotes the first chapter to discussing the death of the commander, whether in war against the enemy or civil war. What she finds is that death in war was not afforded a distinct category in itself and, unlike the Greeks who celebrated the heroism of dying in defence of the state, Romans generals aspired to conquer their enemies and survive. The lack of specific provision for those that had died in war is perhaps due to the fact that the Romans associated death with defeat.
Aside from death in war, Catharine Edwards’ book explores all manner of murders, executions, suicides, death in the arena and martyrdom. She examines the significance of death and dying in the Roman world primarily through accounts given by historians, poets and philosophers such as Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus and Augustine. These accounts provide insights, not only into beliefs and ritual, but into people’s expectations, anxieties and preoccupations with death. Drawing on a range of literary extracts, given in the original and in English translation, the book covers a great deal of ground; ideas about the afterlife and transcending death, witnessing death, mortuary ritual and behaviour, commemoration, attitudes towards self-killing, death as a means of communication with the living, heroic and poetic death, and much more. Edwards arranges the discourse about death into chapters dealing with the glorious death of the commander, death as spectacle in the arena, the fear of death, defiance, complicity and self-destruction, ‘dying in character: Stoicism and the Roman death scene’, funereal image and metaphor at the dining table, the death of women and martyrdom.
Also of interest:
|
