Seen on the Classicists list

1st International Congress on
Piracy and Maritime Security
in the Western Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula
in Antiquity

University of Seville

27-28 October 2011

Programme

Thursday 27 October – University of Seville Auditorium

MORNING SESSION

10.00-10.30 Welcome and opening remarks

10.30-11.15 – G. Chic García, Universidad de Sevilla
"Violencia legal y no legal en el marco del Estrecho de Gibraltar"

11.15-11.45 – Break

11.45=12.30 – V. Gabrielsen, University of Copenhagen
"Piracy and the Economics of Maritime Protection in the Mediterranean, c.
700-31 BC"

12.30-13.15 – P.A. Gianfrotta, Universitá degli studi della Tuscia
"Tracce archeologiche subacquee della pirateria in età romana
(Mediterraneo occidentale)"

13.15-14.00 – Discussion

EVENING SESSION

17.30-18.15 – A. Domínguez Monedero, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
"Piratería en Magna Grecia y Sicilia: mecanismos de prevención y
contención"

18.15-19.00 – P. de Souza, University College Dublin
"Piracy and Politics in the Western Mediterranean 500 BC to AD 500"

19.00-19.45 – Claudio Beltrame, Universitá di Venezia
“Ships and Piracy in the Roman Empire”

19.45-20.30 – Discussion

Friday 28 October – Faculty of Geography & History Main Lecture Theatre

MORNING SESSION

10.00-10.45 – E. Ferrer Albelda, Universidad de Sevilla
"La piratería en los tratados entre Cartago y Roma"

10.45-11.30 – A. Puig Palerm, CEIPAC. Universidad de Barcelona
"La piratería en el archipiélago balear en la Antigüdad ¿Sólo una causa de
la intervención romana del 123 a.C.?"

11.30-12.00 – Break

12.00-12.45 – E. García Riaza, Universidad de las Islas Baleares
"Bandidos y piratas occidentales en el ius belli romano-republicano".

12.45-13.30 – Isaías Arrayás Morales, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
"Entre Oriente y Occidente. La acción de piratas y corsarios en el marco
de las guerras silanas"

13.30-14.15 – Discussion

EVENING SESSION

17.30-18.15 – Alfonso Álvarez-Ossorio Rivas, Universidad de Sevilla
"Sexto Pompeyo. ¿Un pirata romano?”

18.15-19.00 – A. Alvar Nuño, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos I
"Riesgo pirático y amparo divino en el Occidente romano".

19.00-19.45 – D. Álvarez Jiménez, Universidad Complutense
"Crimen y castigo en la mar: el archipirata Contradis y la inquietud
marítima del Mediterráneo Occidental a comienzos del s. V d.C."

19.00-20.30 – Discussion

Organised by the Departments of Ancient History and Prehistory &
Archaeology of the University of Sevilla, in collaboration with the
External Relations Office, the Vice-Rector for Research, the Faculty of
Geography and History, the Faculty of Education Studies, and Grupo PAI HUM-
323.

Registration
Registration requires payment of the registration fee (€40/40 euros)
payable to Banco Santander (Current Account 0049 4306 63 2290072300), and
return of the registration form given below to:

Secretaria del Departamento de Historia Antigua
Facultad de Geografía e Historia
Universidad de Sevilla
Calle Doña María de Padilla
41004 Sevilla
Spain

Tel. +34 954 551 389
Fax +34 954 559 914

Due to limited space, registrations will be accepted on a strictly first
come first served basis.

Attendance at all sessions will entitle delegates to a certificate of
participation.

E-mail contacts: alfossorio AT us.es, egarcia AT us.es, eferrer AT us.es

This is another one which ended up not getting much coverage in the English-reading press for reasons unknown. A couple weeks after all the excitement about the ‘solar’ alignment of Hadrian’s Villa, AFP reported:

Lack of money mean parts of Roman emperor Hadrian’s villa have had to be closed off to tourists because they are in danger of collapse, an Italian paper reported Wednesday.

The historic site at Tivoli, 24 kilometres (15 miles) from Rome, received only 370,000 euros (530,000 dollars) to maintain the villa and its grounds, Il Corriere della Sera reported.

But those responsible for the site, which spreads over 80 hectares (nearly 200 acres), say it needs at least 2.5 million euros, the paper said.

They complained that over the past three years they had received only 1.5 million euros of the 6.7 million they needed.

As a result, they had had to close off more and more areas with metal barriers and signs warning of the risk of collapse.

The villa, known as the Villa Adriana, has been listed on UNESCO’s world heritage list since December 1999.

Over the past 10 years however, it has lost 41.8 percent of its paying visitors: from 187,202 in 2000 down to 108,811 in 2010.

One expert, Federica Chiappetta, told the paper that as well as the state of the site, visitors had also been put off by the lack of information.

The villa was built between 117 and 138 AD on the orders of the then emperor, Hadrian.

UNESCO calls it “a masterpiece that uniquely brings together the highest expressions of the material cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world.”

• via AFP: Historic Hadrian’s villa ‘at risk of collapse’.

From Iran’s Press TV:

Known as the best preserved archaeological site in Bulgaria, Nikopolis-ad-Istrum is called by some the Bulgarian Pompeii, StandArt reported.

The team is slated to start excavations this summer by exploring a building dating back to the time of Roman emperor Septimus, which experts believe was used as temple by the worshippers of the goddess Cybele.

Previous excavations have yielded pieces of wall paneling, details of door cases, windows and niches.

Archeologists now hope to restore the architectural layout of the settlement as it used to be during the reign of Emperor Trajan in the second century.

Preliminary studies revealed the network of streets, the forum surrounded by an Ionic colonnade and many buildings, a two-nave room later turned into a basilica which showed that the town was planned based on the orthogonal system.

The architectural remains and sculptures show a similarity with those of the ancient towns in Asia Minor.

• via PressTV – Bulgarian Pompeii to be excavated again.

… hopefully we’ll hear more about this as the dig goes on; a couple of years ago they found a Nymphaeum there …

This is one of those annoying stories which either has coverage that is way too detailed or way too short and I grow weary of waiting for some decent coverage. We first heard of Turkey’s plans to try to repatriate the half of the ‘Weary Hercules” which was in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts a couple of years ago: Turkey and Repatriation. Here’s an excerpt from the lengthy Boston Globe coverage on how the MFA came to have their half (inter alia, of course):

Though there is no documentation detailing the discovery of the MFA’s half, Turkish archeologists say they are sure it was found in the same place – and around the same time – as the lower section of the statue.

That place is Perge, a city about 10 miles east of Antalya and, in ancient times, a wealthy center of cultural and political life. Today, Perge is a huge tourist attraction, home to one of the country’s longest-operating archeological sites. Digs have been underway since the 1940s.

It was in 1980 that Turkish archeologists found the southern baths where, in about 15 feet of rubble, lay a dozen statues. One of the discoveries was the bottom section of “Herakles,’’ a Roman statue in eight pieces.

The top half was probably in the area at the same time, though it wasn’t spotted by the archeologists, according to Inci Delemen, a professor at Istanbul University and today the deputy director of the Perge excavations.

In a recent phone interview, Delemen said that security was lax in those days, and that she suspects one of the crew members found the upper half and hustled it out of the site. It is simply too much of a coincidence that the top half emerged in public in 1981, one year after the discovery of the bottom half, said Delemen.

The MFA purchased the piece in 1981 with New York collectors Leon Levy, a Wall Street millionaire, and his wife, Shelby White, from a German dealer named Mohammad Yeganeh. The arrangement called for the MFA to take possession of the work – it went on display on April 2, 1982 – but to receive the remaining 50 percent ownership only after Levy’s death.

As for the top half’s origin, Yeganeh told the collectors that it came from “his mother’s collection and before that from a dealer in Germany about 1950,’’ according to MFA records.

It’s an explanation that has always rung hollow for Delemen and other experts.

“It was obviously taken from the excavation,’’ she said.

… further on, we get this interesting bit:

Cornelius C. Vermeule III, the MFA’s legendary curator of classical art, dismissed the notion of the two halves being linked. He said that because the statue was one of more than 100 copies of a fourth-century BC bronze original by the Greek sculptor Lysippos of Sikyon, it would be difficult to determine where the sculpture was from.

“ ‘Weary Herakles’ turn up from Britain to the Rhineland, from Portugal to Mesopotamia, from Southern Russia to Upper Egypt,’’ he told the Boston Globe at the time. “Do you send out 50 letters from Iran to Ireland saying, ‘We’ve got a ‘Weary Herakles.’ Do you have the rest of it?’ ’’

… we should note here that the statue itself is nothing ‘special’ (even though all ancient statuary is). Even without seeing a photo, I’m sure everyone reading this has in his/her mind’s eye an image of a resting Herakles (a.k.a. the Farnese Hercules) which they have seen countless times in countless books and/or museums. They probably had a prof somewhere along the way with a version of this in their office or in the deparmental coffee lounge.

Vermeule, who died at 83 in 2008, would later admit that the museum did not know whether some works in its collection had been illicitly removed from other countries before finding their way into the MFA. Eventually, the museum told him not to speak to the press. He avoided interviews in his final years, at one point impersonating an elderly lady on the telephone to pretend he was unreachable.

But in 1990, when confronted by the Connoisseur article, Vermeule did offer a compelling idea: If there were questions about the statue, he said, the first step would be to make plaster casts of the two halves and see if they fit.

… so on to testing:

The puzzle pieces The test took place on a Friday in September at the MFA.

Nineteen years later, Brunilde S. Ridgway remembers the moment well.

Then a Bryn Mawr professor of classical and Near Eastern archeology, Ridgway had been asked by the Turkish government to observe the test. Also in the room were MFA research director Arthur Beale, Vermeule, attorney Scott Tross, and archeologist Jale Inan, who had found the bottom section.

“I was a little uneasy about it because, of course, Cornelius Vermeule was a friend, and Emily, his wife, was a Bryn Mawr alumna,’’ said Ridgway, now retired. “He kept saying, ‘No, they are not the same statue. They are two different pieces.’ Everybody thought, since they were putting two casts together, they would need to prop them up and make some adjustments. Well, they practically clicked. It was so perfect, so completely obvious. Cornelius didn’t even say a word.

via: Making ‘Herakles’ whole after all these years | Boston Globe

After that, it seems there was some hemming and hawing, and now the MFA has finally decided to return it. In any event, the author of the Boston Globe piece also is behind a very nice little video on all of the above (tip o’ the pileus to Francesca Tronchin for alerting us to this a few days ago):

The BBC’s coverage (tip o’ the pileus to Adrian Murdoch) is very brief and spins it a bit differently, but not significantly so:

• Weary Herakles bust to be returned by US to Turkey

As covered by other news outlets:

• Greek god Hercules reunited with his bottom half as museum agrees to send back ‘looted’ bust to Turkey | Daily Mail

On other blogs:

• Two halves of “The Weary Herakles” to reunite, but… | Safe Corner

From the Greek Reporter:

On July 21st the Museum Board of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, approved a preliminary report for a new Museum of Marine Antiquities in the building SILO at the “Cultural Coast of Piraeus”. The museum’s exhibits will include 2000 archaeological findings, copies of ancient artworks, works of modern artists concerning the relation of the Greeks with the sea, the diaries of Cousteau, findings of the wreck in Alonisos, ceramics of the byzantine period, amphoras, ship equipment, coins, anchors, arms and household objects. The writers of the preliminary report, Stella Chrysoulaki and Androniki Miltiadou were congratulated on their excellent work.

The museum will be 6500 square metres in size and will be unique in Greece and the rest of the world.

Visitors will have the chance, thanks to a boat simulation to sink into deep waters to see an ancient boat or an ancient wreck. The preliminary report for the new museum also includes a plan of creating gaming concerning the deep sea and there are plans to make ceramic, stone, wood, metals and plaster casts laboratories as well as a library, a room with multimedia educational programmes as well as an amphitheatre!

The building SILO was used for cereals storage and some of the rooms have been preserved. It is located in front of the Piraeus port. Aim is to attract not only people who love museums but also those who come to the port with cruise ships.

• via New Museum of Marine Antiquities in Piraeus | Greek Reporter