Io Saturnalia! by Alison Morton

Temple of Saturn, Rome (Author photo)

Rome Saturnalia was THE most important Roman festival. Heavy on feasting, fun and gifts, it was originally celebrated in Ancient Rome for only a day around 17 December (today!), but it was so popular it expanded into a week or even longer, despite Augustus' efforts to reduce it to three days, and Caligula's, to five. Like today's Christmas, this holy day (feriae publicae) had a serious origin: to honour the god of sowing, Saturn. But also like modern Christmas, it was a festival day (dies festus). After sacrifice at the temple, there was a public banquet, which Livy says was introduced in 217 BC. Afterwards, according to the poet Macrobius, the celebrants shouted 'Io, Saturnalia' at a riotous feast in the temple.

Modern mid-winter habits echo Roman conspicuous eating and drinking, and visiting friends and giving gifts, particularly of wax candles (cerei), and earthenware figurines (sigillaria). Masters served meals to their slaves who were permitted the unaccustomed luxuries of leisure and gambling. A member of the familia (family plus slaves) was appointed Saturnalicius princeps, roughly equivalent to the Lord of Misrule.

The poet Catullus describes Saturnalia as 'the best of days' while Seneca complains that the 'whole mob has let itself go in pleasures'. Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated. Sound familiar?

Macrobius described a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome which classicists date to between 383 and 430 AD. So  Saturnalia was alive and well under Christian emperors, but no longer as an official religious holiday.

But alongside ran the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (the birthday of the 'unconquerable sun'), a festival celebrating the renewal of light and the coming of the new year and which took place on 25 December. By the middle of the fourth century AD,  the dominant Christian religion had integrated the Dies Natalis into their celebration of Christmas. So it seems that Saturnalia wasn't the official ancestor of Christmas after all. Never mind.

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In Roma Nova, Saturnalia is celebrated in much the same way. Here's a tale straight from the Mitela household in Roma Nova...

From the journal of Carina Mitela, Roma Nova, 17 December - Saturnalia

"Thirty-six hours later, we were snowed in. The newsies were having a field day with their graphs and charts. The ploughs and tractors were out soon enough despite it being an official holiday and were attempting to keep the main city roads cleared.

Although most of the public Saturnalia celebrations were cancelled, the priests would make the usual grand sacrifice and invoke Saturn’s blessings. I pitied them today; it was a Greek rite and they’d have to shiver in sleeveless fringed tunics, with heads bare instead of a warm woollen toga snuggly folded over the head. It was a sure bet they’d turn up the heating in the Temple of Saturn and have every open brazier burning hard.

My husband, Conrad, and our youngest daughter, Tonia, sat in silence at breakfast. Our eldest, Allegra, had called first thing to say she would join us just after two when she finished her shift. She looked tired on the screen; hopefully she’d get some sleep before tomorrow. She’d been called in with the rest of the military to help ensure vital services were kept running.

‘I’ll be there, Mama, as long as there are no further disturbances in the city.’

‘What do you mean “disturbances”?’

‘Unfortunately,’ she said in the driest tone I’d ever heard her use, ‘some people seem to think the custodes concentrating on the bad weather crisis means they can help themselves to what’s in the shops. I’ve been freezing my, er, extremities off in the Macellum district all night. We came across some kids with a crowbar in front of a smashed window, pulling stuff out of an electrical goods shop. The alarm was going, but so were others. As soon as they saw us, though, they ran like the Furies were after them.’ She chuckled.

The sight of half a dozen Praetorians marching towards you with intent and attitude would make anybody run.

‘But they’ve opened the basilica for the public banquet. My oppo, Sergilia, has caught guard duty there,’ she added, making a face. The law court hall was huge and could accommodate up to a thousand. But good luck to those trying to keep order.

After checking last details with the steward for the celebration meal later, I retreated to my office for an hour to check my messages and that nobody had found my stash of gifts for the 23rd. Sigillaria was important not just for the kids who loved new toys, but when adults gave each other something to compensate for the excesses that would surely happen today.

Normally on Saturnalia morning, my cousin Helena and I would sip a glass of champagne and exchange jokes and snippets of gossip. She had more than a finger on the pulse of city life; its lifeblood ran through her. She’d also forewarn me about any particularly risqué activities the household were planning for today.

Ceding my place at the head of the Mitela tribe for a day to the princeps Saturnalicius was all well and good, but even misrule and chaos had its limit as far as I was concerned. But for a few hours, the house would be overrun with noise, people, stupid but fun dares, overeating, games, theatricals and stand-up of dubious taste, arguments, falling in lust, laughter and progressive drunkenness. Helena would make sure the children were safe out of the way when the horseplay became a little too raunchy.

By early afternoon the atrium blazed with light. Everywhere was covered in ferns, spruce and pine. In the centre was a large square table covered with linen, silverware, glasses, candles and the best china. I smelt roast pork, lemons and spices. In tune with the reversal of the day Junia, the steward, was enthroned in my usual place. Conrad handed me a glass of champagne. He was on waiter duty. His Saturnalia tunic was bright orange. He shrugged. Then grinned. Wearing over-colourful clothes was traditional, but a strain on the eyes.

‘It’s only for a day,’ he whispered.

‘I know,’ and smiled back. ‘But I wish Gil had been able to make it.’

Our thirteen-year-old son had been staying in the country with Conrad’s cousin and was caught in the atrocious weather. We’d be lucky to see him before Sigillaria. Gil loved the madness of Saturnalia. My geeky son would turn into a shiny-eyed imp of mischief, darting around, laughing and joking, pulling pranks I didn’t know he knew. Now he’d be holed up with Conrad’s serious cousin for days. I only hoped they had enough food and the electricity hadn’t been cut, like the phone.

‘Well, Tonia’s having fun.’ Conrad pointed to her skipping between people with trays of hors d’oeuvres, watched anxiously by the steward’s son, and me. I could see at least one of the trays coming to grief, contents slithering across the marble floor.

‘Io Saturnalia!’

I blinked at the hearty shout from the household and guests gathered around and raised my glass, then bowed towards the steward. She went to speak, but a blast of cold air and a loud thud interrupted her. All heads turned towards the atrium doors, now open. Allegra, in her military fatigues and winter parka, cheeks burning with the indoor heat, tore off her field cap and shouted, ‘Io Saturnalia’. 

Everybody shouted back, the noise filling the atrium. I hugged her to me, ignoring the cold and wet of her thick coat.

‘I’ve brought you something else, Mama,’ she whispered in my ear and nodded towards the double doors. On the threshold stood a lanky boy – pale, shivering and wide-eyed. He was enveloped in a survival blanket.

 Gil.

'I found him trudging through the city,’ Allegra said. ‘He’s walked the ten kilometres from Brancadorum to get here and –.’

But I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. I ran to the door and crushed him in my arms.

Io Saturnalia, indeed!"

Alison Morton is the author of the Roma Nova thriller series featuring modern Praetorian heroines. More at alison-morton.com 

Roman sea-borne trading and the port of Ostia by Alison Morton

The Romans were organised, truly organised in complex ways not seen again until at least the 18th and 19th centuries. Trade was vital to Ancient Rome. The empire cost a vast sum of money to run and trade brought in much of that money. The population of the city of Rome grew to over one million and demand for more and different goods and services to build and maintain a high status lifestyle fuelled trade from further and further afield.

Roman trade routes map (ORBIS, Stanford Uni)

In addition to the 80,000 kilometres of first class roads (as at c. AD 200) built primarily for the movement of military forces, used by the imperial courier service, for government administration and lastly for trade, sea routes crossed the Empire through the Mediterranean from Spain, France and North Africa to Syria, north to Britannia and east to the Black Sea.  They supported trade between a network of coastal cities - Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage. These cities were serviced by a road network permitting trade within their respective hinterlands. River transport was not so widespread as the major pan-European rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, were military frontiers, not the core of the Empire.

The Romans built lighthouses, harbour complexes, docks and warehouses to further sea trade and make it secure. The Roman navy (classis) tried with varying success to keep the Mediterranean Sea safe from pirates. Although the navy was instrumental in the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean basin, it never enjoyed the prestige of the Roman legions. Romans were a primarily land-based people, and relied partially on other nationalities such as Greeks, Phoenicians and the Egyptians, to build and man their ships. Partly because of this, the navy was never wholly embraced by the Roman state, and deemed somewhat "un-Roman". Unlike modern naval forces, the Roman navy even at its height never existed as an autonomous service, but operated as an adjunct to the Roman army.

Trade was facilitated by a single official currency and no complicating customs dues. Trade developed in complexity and reach  as peace became more established and with more trade, prosperity increased. When the Empire disintegrated in the late AD 400s, overseas markets disappeared, supply and distribution routes became unsafe and trade collapsed. The Mediterranean Sea became a dangerous place for merchants as there were no powers to control the activities of pirates who marauded as far north as the English Channel.

What was acquired from where?
The Romans imported a whole variety of materials: beef, corn, glassware, iron, lead, leather, marble, olive oil, perfumes, purple dye, silk, silver, spices, timber, tin and wine. The main trading partners were in Spain, France, the Middle East and North Africa. Britain exported lead, woollen products and tin. In return, it imported from Rome wine, olive oil, pottery and papyrus.

Bireme (Creative Commons)

Ostia, Rome's port
The most important sea port was Ostia situated at the mouth of the River Tiber and only 15 miles from Rome. According to an inscription, the original castrum (military camp) of Ostia was established in the 7th century BC. However, the oldest archaeological remains so far discovered date back to only the 4th century BC when Rome fought several naval actions. The traditional birth date of the Roman navy is set at ca. 311 BC, when, after the conquest of Campania, two new officials, the duumviri navales classis ornandae reficiendaeque causa, were tasked with the maintenance of a fleet. The most ancient buildings currently visible in Ostia are from the 3rd century BC, notably the castrum. From this point on, Ostia starts to play an important role as a military harbour. When Rome installed a new naval magistracy in 267 BC, one of the officials was permanently based in Ostia. Traders and artisans settled in Ostia to make a living in and around the harbour.

Goods could be quickly moved to Rome in barges up the River Tiber after slaves had unloaded and transferred cargo from merchant ships. The Romans built the world's first dual carriageway, via Portuensis, between Rome and Ostia. In 68 BC, the town was sacked by pirates. During the sack, the port was set on fire, the consular war fleet was destroyed, and two prominent senators kidnapped. This attack caused such panic in Rome that Pompey the Great arranged for the tribune Aulus Gabinius to propose a law, the Lex Gabinia, to allow Pompey to raise an army and destroy the pirates. Within a year, the pirates had been defeated.

Development
Ostia was further developed during the first century AD under the influence of Tiberius, who ordered the building of the town's first forum. Temples, bathhouses, a theatre, shops, warehouses, construction yards, workshops, guilds became an integral part of the town.

Ostia Antica forum (author photo)

With the expansion of the physical city and the demands of the population of Rome, traffic on the river became ever more congested. Manoeuvring became impossible on the 100 metre wide river and silting exacerbated the problem. To guarantee a consistent supply of corn for Rome, the emperor Claudius started to build a new harbour (portus) in 42 AD two miles north of Ostia on the northern mouths of the Tiber.

(ostia-antica.org)

Two curving moles were built out into the sea. Between the moles, on an island formed by sinking a large merchantman, a four-storied lighthouse was built. This harbour became silted up and around about 110 AD the emperor Trajan enlarged the new harbour with a huge land-locked inner hexagonal basin still visible today. Its form was hexagonal in order to reduce the erosive forces of the waves. The harbours were connected with the Tiber by canals.

Hexagonal basin (Uni Southampton)

The new Trajanic harbour was described as 'Portus Ostiensis' and the council and magistrates of Ostia also controlled the daily life of Portus. The harbours of Ostia continued their function as a major port as can be seen by traces of the many corn warehouses. This development took business away from Ostia itself which acted principally at that time as a river port only and began its commercial decline. One can only imagine the wrangling between the established guilds, merchants and city councillors in old Ostia and the up and coming traders of the modern, specifically designed new Portus.

Ostia and Portus grew to 50,000 inhabitants in the 2nd century, reaching a peak of some 100,000 inhabitants in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Portus was critically important for supplying the ever-growing city of imperial Rome with foodstuffs and materials from across the Mediterranean.  It also acted as both a point of export for supplies and products from the Tiber Valley to the north of Rome, and a major hub for the redistribution of goods from ports across the Mediterranean. It must also have acted as a major conduit for people visiting Rome from around the Mediterranean.

Roman port litho, Seewesen by Walter Muller, 1893

Ostia was to play a major part in the downfall of Rome when Alaric the Goth captured it in AD 409 knowing that this would starve Rome of much needed food. The port began to enter a period of slow decline from the late 5th century AD onwards, although it was the scene of a major struggle between Byzantine and Ostrogothic troops during the Gothic wars (AD 535-553).

Ostia Antica chandler’s floor (author photo)

Today Ostia Antica in an outstanding site for tourists and students alike and noted for the excellent preservation of its ancient buildings, magnificent frescoes and impressive mosaics (http://www.ostia-antica.org).

Portus is the centre of an exciting project led by the University of Southampton (http://www.portusproject.org/). In 2014, a new canal and town wall at Ostia was discovered. In 2016, the Portus Project launched a series of online ‘tours’ https://tour.portusproject.org/en/about  (Click the menu bars at the top right to start).

I shall be following the project with great interest…

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Alison Morton is the author of the Roma Nova thriller series.
More at alison-morton.com

Roman women in Late Antiquity by Alison Morton

Helena, mother of Constantine the Great 
(author photo, Naples Museum)

I set out to write about women in the late Roman period – ambitious for a blog post, but I thought I could pull some threads out of a big subject and produce a digest. Not that easy, as I discovered...

'Late Antiquity' is a vague name for the period bridging classical antiquity and the early middle ages, approximately 3rd to 6th century, but I was looking at the first half of that period, hoping to focus on the time that Roma Nova, the imaginary country portrayed in my novels, was founded AD 395. The snag? Sources for this period are patchy and often only legal codes, medical texts or written by early Christian fathers with their own agenda.

Women belonged in the private sphere during most of classical antiquity, and the Romans drew a clear line between the public and the private. Formal politics took place outside the private dwelling house; even when senators conducted political and government business in their domus, or family home, it was in the 'public' rooms separated from the  personal familia areas.

Everybody living in the domus was subject to, and the responsibility of, the paterfamilias, the 'father of the family'. In law, this authority did not extend to wives who were subject to their fathers, but in practice husbands ruled.  Women retained the right to manage and dispose of the property they brought into their marriages and enjoyed full inheritance rights on a par with their brothers.

Roman family group
(author photo, Roman National Museum)

Husbands were expected be the public face for their wives in legal cases, but women had the right to act on their own if they chose. It was only by the late fourth century that widows (not divorcees) could be the legal guardians of their children. Christian emperors were obliged to revise the law in order to reflect Christian ideals of the time (heavily influenced by the ever pragmatic Constantine, I suspect!). However, that must have been tricky with the traditionally open Roman divorce law; even at its most restrictive, it probably failed to match the orthodoxy of the new, strict Christian teaching.

Traditional Roman morality saw adultery in terms of property rights; marriage was often an economic arrangement for the pragmatic Romans with the participants often having little say in parents' decisions. The double standard of sexual behaviour remained as it always had throughout Roman times but despite Christanisation, divorce and remarriage were still relatively easy. It would change, of course. But that and differences between slave and free and between concubines and wives must have raised considerable conflict with Christian universalism.

Christianity also challenged aristocratic marriage practice by forbidding marriages between relatives and by making celibacy (and so leaving inheritances outside the family) an acceptable option. The latter, of course, gave women an opportunity for the single life which apart from becoming a Vestal hadn't been available in traditional Roman society.

Fayum mummy portrait 3rd century
Louvre, Paris

Women were expected to dress modestly, but were not veiled nor secluded. Chris Wickham in The Inheritance of Rome says there is plenty of evidence for female literacy and literary engagement not only among the aristocracy. In Egypt, women have been recorded as buying and selling property, renting out property, money-lending, operating as independent artisans and shop-owners as well as practising medicine as midwives and more broadly.

Women still could not hold public political office in this later period, but Wickham cites one female city governor, Patrikia, in Antaiopolis in Egypt in 553 AD. In Alexandria, Hypatia, as the city’s leading intellectual (mathematician, astronomer and head of the Neo-Platonic School), "appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more" (Socrates Scholasticus).

Sadly, Hypatia was killed by a mob in Alexandria in 415 AD, caught in city-wide anger stemming from a feud between Orestes, the prefect (governor) of Alexandria and Cyril, the Christian bishop of Alexandria.

Galla Placidia

And as the Western Empire shrank, powerful empresses such as Galla Placidia were common in the fifth and sixth centuries. Daughter of Theodosius I, Regent for Emperor Valentinian III from 423 AD until his majority in 437 AD, consort to Ataulf, King of the Goths from 414 AD until his death in 415 AD, and briefly Empress Consort to Constantius III in 421 AD, she was a major force in Roman politics for most of her life.


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Thanks to two invaluable sources:
The Inheritance of Rome: A history of Europe from 400 to 1000 , Chris Wickham, Pengiuin 2010

Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles, Gillian Clark, OUP 1993   

Alison Morton's latest book in the Roma Nova thriller series, RETALIO, is available from the usual retailers as ebook or paperback.

www.alison-morton.com