Author: matthewjordanstorm

On This Day – February 28th 628CE – Death of Khosro II

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ Leave a comment

Who speaks for Khosro Parvez, Shahanshah, arguably the greatest of Sassanian (Persian) kings? Khosro, son of Kavadh, grandson of Khosro I, died this day, February 28 628CE.

Khosro II

Khosro was a fascinating, complex, and ultimate tragic character. Born into the purple, scorned by his father Kavadh (who he eventually killed, presaging his own fate at the hands of his son Kavadh), he lost his throne as a young king. He fled to Roman territory and with the help of the Roman emperor Mauricius, who Khosro would come to call ‘father’, he would regain his throne. Though he was grateful to Mauricius, he would always carry a chip on his shoulder knowing that many in Persia considered him to be a Roman pawn. So when Mauricius was murdered by the centurion Phocas, Khosro saw his opportunity for redemption. Marshaling the power of a Persian empire that was every bit Rome’s equal in 602CE – and in some ways was Rome’s superior because the Black Plague that had devastated the Romans in prior decades left Persia relatively unscathed because plague attacked city dwellers most of all and Persia was a largely rural empire – Khosro struck.

Rome and Persia had sparred for nearly a thousand years, but until Khosro launched his war on Rome, battles between Persia and Rome had always been about borders, never about each others right to survival. Khosro broke this well worn tradition. He sought to eliminate Rome, not to defeat Rome, and hewould have accomplished his objective, extinguishing Rome’s light once and for all, had he not chosen as his nemesis one of the most exceptional military commanders, and Roman emperors, in history: Heraclius.

Heraclius led the last Roman army – literally the last field army left in the entire Roman Empire – into battle against the might of Khosro’s Persia. And in one of the most improbably campaigns in history, Heraclius defeated each of Khosro’s generals in turn before marching into the Persian heartland and menacing the Persian capital at Ctesiphon. Khosro was ultimately overthrown by his own people who were exhausted by his endless war, and Persia made peace with Rome. But the cost of the long war against Rome was too great, and after her defeat Persia was left too weak. A contemporary of Heraclius and Persia – the Prophet Muhammad – sent his armies roaring out of the desert to attack enfeebled Persia, and within two decades of Khosro’s death, the Persian Empire was no more.

This was the life of Khosro Parvez, who died this day, the last great lion of the Sassanids.

On This Day in History – February 11th – Heraclius Augustus Dies

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ 2 Comments
Heraclius. The Exarch’s son. Roman Emperor. Had he not lived and triumphed over the Persian Empire in the last great war of antiquity, had he capitulated in the face of insurmountable odds and the most implacable of foes, the world we live in would be unrecognizable, and yet his name has been nearly lost to history. Handsome, brilliant, blessed with position at birth, cursed by the loss of his true love, Fabia, and several children, confronted by Black Plague, barbarian invasions, and a Persian King of Kings hellbent on Rome’s annihilation, Heraclius fought back. In 622CE he led the last Roman army out of beleaguered Constantinople’s gates to confront four maurading Persian generals that had torn Rome asunder. If he had lost a single battle that would have been the end. The histories would have said that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476CE, and the Eastern Roman Empire fell in 622CE. Instead the East would last until 1453CE, a breath before Columbus sailed the ‘ocean blue’. And when Rome finally fell, its last, rare breath would give life to the Renaissance, returning civilization to the West. Had Heraclius lost in 622, none of this would have happened. How could it be that we were not taught anything about Heraclius in school? Why hasn’t he starred in a dozen Hollywood blockbusters? When the downtrodden of the world look to history for inspiration, why do they not look to him? I have some thoughts on how such a vitally relevant, inspiring, and eminently human hero has been written out of our histories, but more on that another day. For now, I simply wish to recognize that Heraclius died on this day (February 11th – I trust he would forgive me for publishing this a week late) in the year 641CE.

566 Years After The Fall – Rome Lives…

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ Leave a comment
Witness the might of an ancient civilization so powerful and resonant that 566 years after it passed into legend, a dictator in Turkey continues to battle its ghost…
 
I refer to the ghost of ancient Rome, officially extinguished 566 years ago this week, on May 29th, 1456 when Mehmed the Conqueror’s hordes finally pierced Constantinople’s Theodosian Walls, murdering the last Roman Emperor (Constantine XI Palaiologos), and completing the Turk’s conquest of the Roman Empire. Of course the Empire had ceased to exist in any recognizable form centuries before, and yet, in that still exceptionally grand city on the Golden Horn – in its libraries, churches, palaces, and in the memories of its denizens, the ancient world had lived on even as the West plunged into its miserable Dark Ages.
 
Many in the West (perhaps most of us except for the truly obsessed or fortunate) were taught in school that Rome “fell” in 476CE when the teenage Emperor Romulus Augustulus handed his crown to the Goth warlord Odoacer, formally ending the Western Roman Empire. In fact that is only half the story. In the East, on the Bosporus, in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) where Constantine the Great had moved the capital of the Roman Empire in 330CE, a Roman Emperor had ruled continuously from 330 to 1453. The Western Empire bowed out early, the but East continued, and thrived for many centuries and its existence played a critical role in the shape of the world that we occupy today.
 
Constantinople’s fall in 1453 sent thousands of refugees from fleeing westwards (principally to Italy) where their knowledge of ancient science, art, and history would prove essential to sparking the Renaissance. The very idea of the Renaissance was, of course, a misnomer, because in the East the ancient world had never died – only in the West had the past been forgotten.
 
This news of Rome’s fall in 1453 is long-in-the-tooth, to say the least, and yet its impact is still very keenly felt in certain circles! Specifically, in the old Roman city of Ankyra, in Turkey, a dictator reigns (the current Turkish President Recip Erdogan) – and each year without fail that man makes a very great deal of the fact that the Turks defeated the Romans 566 years before.
 
This year was no exception.
 
As reported this week in the popular press, Erdogan tweeted about the Turks’ victory:
 
“…the conquest of Constantinople changed the course of world history. May Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottomans and his army rest in peace…”
 
That autocrats still celebrate a centuries old victory says something meaningful about the enduring legacy of Rome itself, even the latter-day Eastern Roman Empire that we in the West refer to erroneously as the “Byzantine Empire”.
 
Still resonant, and relevant, six centuries after it finally disappeared from the face of the planet.
 
Long live Rome…

New Novel Coming Soon – THE EXARCH’S SON

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that in the Summer of 2019, my newest novel, THE EXARCH’S SON, will be released on Amazon. Following is a brief description:

“Seventy years after the fall of the West, the Emperor Justinian and General Belisarius had nearly stitched the Empire back together when the Black Plague hit, killing half Rome’s citizens, bringing the Empire to her knees and evil to Caesar’s throne.

THE EXARCH’S SON follows the tale of Heraclius, son of the Exarch of Carthage, born into this humbled Rome, and his quest to rescue the Empire from the clutches of the tyrant Emperor Phocas. Young Heraclius sails to Constantinople to confront Phocas, while the most powerful enemies that Rome has ever known – the Avars and resurgent Persians – overrun her borders. And in Arabia’s deserts a new dynasty emerges, one that will change the world forever.”

On This Day in 533, Belisarius Avenged Rome’s Honor “Ad Decimum Miliare”

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ 2 Comments

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, September 13th 533, the Roman General Flavius Belisarius changed the history of the world by winning an unwinnable battle against the barbarian Vandals in what had once been Roman Africa, at a place known to us as AD DECIMUM, the tenth mile marker…

Humble milestones like the one pictured below marked each mile throughout the Roman highway system, spanning the 250,000 miles of roadway that once stretched from modern Scotland to Yemen. So extraordinarily durable was their construction that a number of those roads (and the bridges they crossed) are still in use today across former Roman territories in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  Roman mile markers allowed the traveler to know precisely where they stood in relation to their departure point and destination, long before our slavish devotion to smart phones and GPS.

In what had been Roman Africa, stolen by the Vandals 100 years before, there stood such a stone on the approach to Carthage from the east on the ancient Roman highway that ran along the coast. To put this battle into a modern geographical context, note that where Carthage once stood in the ancientworld the sprawling metropolis of Tunis, capital of Tunisia, sits today (see map below). The actual battle took place at the tenth milestone from Carthage, known simply as Decimum Miliare (the tenth mile). This milestone, along with the battlefield itself has not been rediscovered by archaeologists as it lies beneath the suburbs of modern Tunis.

 

 

 

 

At that now lost tenth milestone (Ad Decimum), on this day – September 13th of 533 – the Roman Army led by General Flavius Belisarius (pictured below) met the Vandal King Gelimer in a battle that would change the course of history.

The world fully expected the Romans to fail as Roman armies had failed in the field against the Vandals and their Germanic ‘barbarian’ cousins for generations. Let’s recall which Romans sailed into battle against the Vandals – these were the Eastern Romans who had managed to avoid the fate that befell the Western Roman Empire for many reasons, not least of which was their geographical distance from the Vandals, Goths, Visigoths and other Northern Barbarians that had extinguished the Western Roman Empire in 476 with the formal abdication of the last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus. The Vandal theft of Africa and their brutal sack of the City of Rome were undoubtedly two of the key events that made the loss of the West inevitable.

Now these Eastern Romans sailed straight towards mortal danger over 1,000 miles from home – having set sail with an invasion armada for the first time in decades (on ships that were specially built for the purpose since Rome no longer possessed a deep water navy). If they lost to the Vandals there would be no retreat and no hope of reinforcements. If Belisarius lost the battle at the tenth milestone, the Eastern Roman Empire would be in grave jeopardy.  See below for something of Belisarius’ battle plan at Ad Decimum.

 

 

 

Belisarius and his Roman knights (see an image below for the decidedly medieval looking Roman knight that was very much the product of Belisarius’ experimentation with military technology and tactics) would triumph at Decimum Miliare against all odds and went on to extinguish the upstart Vandal kingdom and to bring Africa back into the Roman fold.

 

This was the first in a string of stunning victories engineered by Belisarius that would restore much of the lost Western Empire in the name of the reigning Caesar, the Emperor Justinian. These recuperated lands (Africa, Italy, parts of Gaul and Hispania) would remain part of the Roman Empire until after Justinian’s death – the moment when the ancient world truly ended and the Dark Ages began.

This moment, the battle that became known as Ad Decimum, figures prominently in the second book of my Legend of Africanus series: Avenging Africanus (available at amazon.com).

On This Day – The End of Rome…

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ Leave a comment

ON THIS DAY, May 29th, in the year 1453 the last Roman Emperor, a remarkable man who ruled under the name Constantine XI (born Constantine Palaiologos) died and with him what was left of the Roman Empire – which at this late date was reduced to the capital city of Constantinople with some minor appendages – was finally extinguished.

Constantine was killed leading troops into battle against a vastly larger Ottoman army led by Mehmed the Conqueror. Mehmed had finally succeeded in piercing Constantinople’s Theodosian Walls after a lengthy siege and years of preparation with the aid of modern artillery. It would be the first time these otherworldly walls were so breached (but for the brief Latin incursion) in their 1,100 year history). Unwilling to live in a world in which Rome had ceased to exist, the noble-hearted Emperor stripped the Imperial insignia from his armor so that he would not receive special treatment and plunged headlong into the melee. His body was never found, and he lives on in legend as the “Marble Emperor” who will one day return to his capital to rescue his subjects and to reestablish the Empire.

Rome was founded in 753 BC by refugees from Troy (according to the myths the Romans told themselves) in a swamp beside the Tiber River. There it had been ruled by foreign (Etruscan) kings until 509BC whereupon it chose self-rule as a republic until a young man named Octavian changed his name to Augustus and succeeded where his uncle Julius Gaius Caesar had failed in 27BC, ending the Republic and ushering in the birth of the Principate, lead by the Imperator. In 330CE Constantine I formally moved the capital from Rome to “Nova Roma”, known as Constantinople among its denizens.

One thousand four hundred and eighty years later both the Principate and the nation of Rome herself died there on the banks of the Bosporus, on May 29th 1453, scant years before Christopher Columbus ‘sailed the ocean blue.’

Tell me if that does not spark the imagination?

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ 3 Comments

ON THIS DAY, December 9th in the year 536CE (AD), Roman General Flavius Belisarius entered the city of Rome through the Asinarian Gate with his small cohort of Roman knights.

The city’s residents had not seen a Roman Legionnaire for almost exactly 60 years, when what remained of the Western armies deserted the Eternal City after the Goth warlord Odoacer toppled the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus (the “little Augustus”).

Since that time, Rome (the city) had been under the control of a series of Goth rulers, including Odoacer, Theodoric (the “Great”), Amalasuntha (daughter of Theodoric), Theodad (cousin of Amalasuntha and her murderer) and at the time of Belisarius’ arrival, the Goth King Vitiges.

Imagine that! For 60 years, the Roman Empire had gone about its business with an Emperor mounted on a throne in Constantinople, while Rome herself – the birthplace of the Romans – was held by barbarians. Imagine a United States continuing to exist, and to thrive, with a Washington D.C. belonging to a foreign power. It sounds inconceivable and so it was to the Emperor Justinian who was determined to accomplish what none had dared, to return Rome to Rome.

By the time that Belisarius arrived in Rome his exploits (in Persia and Africa) were the stuff of legend despite his tender age of ~31. But he arrived woefully understaffed with barely 5,000 Roman knights, and soon faced a Goth army that exceeded 100,000 in number surrounding the city, determined to crush Belisarius and with it, Justinian’s aspirations of restoration.

Did Belisarius panic in the face of such impossible odds? This quote from Procopius – an eyewitness to these events – makes the hairs on my neck stand on end every time I read it:

“On the eighteenth day from the beginning of the siege the Goths moved against the fortifications at about sunrise […] and all the Romans were struck with consternation at the sight of the advancing towers and rams, with which they were altogether unfamiliar. But Belisarius, seeing the ranks of the enemy as they advanced with the engines, began to laugh, and commanded the soldiers to remain quiet and under no circumstances to begin fighting until he himself should give the signal.” – Procopius

Belisarius stood atop the Aurelian Walls and drew his bow (a compound bow design that he borrowed from the Huns and improved upon) and in a blur fired three arrows that killed the three Goth field commanders that commanded the attack, causing chaos in the Goth ranks. Then he began to fire one arrow after another at the oxen that drew the siege engines forth and order his knights to do the same, stopping the towers dead in their tracks. The Siege of Rome that followed would last for one year and nine days and its outcome would make indelible history…

Absolutely fascinating stuff!

This Wikipedia link which does a decent job of summarizing the ensuing Siege of Rome.

Justinian I Died on This Day (November 14, 565CE)

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ Leave a comment

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (NOVEMBER 14) IN THE YEAR 565CE, some one thousand four hundred and fifty two years ago, a truly extraordinary man died – a man who changed our world irrevocably. What’s more, the changes he wrought impact all of us, every single day in ways grand and small and yet most of us have never heard of him. It is safe to say that our world would be quite different had he not lived.

At birth his name was Petrus Sabbatius, citizen of the Roman Empire born to a family of little merit in the grasslands of Thrace, west of the capital of the Roman Empire at Constantinople. A note on that city – at the time of his birth not only was it the seat of government (the Emperor Constantine had moved the capital to Constantinople, formerly known as Byzantium, known today as Istanbul in 335CE) – but it was the grandest city in the entire world, filled with one million souls.

Petrus rose to the throne on August 1st 527, when his uncle – the previous Emperor, Justin I passed away. Petrus had previously served as Commander of the Excubitors, the elite palace guard that protected the Caesars as had the Praetorian Guard back in Old Rome. When Petrus ascended to the throne he assumed the title of Justinian to honor the old man that had plucked him from obscurity – in Latin his title was Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Augustus. By the time he died, Pietrus was known as the Emperor Justinian “the Great”, Caesar, “Restitutor Orbis” (Restorer of the World) and later Saint of the Orthodox Church.

He was a most peculiar man, married to an equally peculiar woman who went by the name of Theodora – she was as beautiful, brilliant and cunning as Cleopatra herself. For as long as she lived he displayed superhuman endurance and extraordinary vision as he stitched the fraying Empire back together – when she died (too young, before him) his will left him, his brilliance dulled, and the decline and accompany darkness that would haunt his successors began.

Together the Imperial couple were (not by accident) surrounded by some of the most extraordinarily able, creative, and dedicated people that had ever been assembled in support of an idea, a sovereign, or a nation. In the case of Justinian’s cabinet (filled with such luminaries as the General Belisarius who won wars with ideas, John ‘the Cappadocian’ the able administrator, Anthemius of Tralles the architect and inventor responsible for the Santa Sophia, and Tribunian the Qaestor the man who codified the whole history of Roman law), they supported something that was at once of this earth and yet more, aspirational, otherworldly. A single word that captures their cause continues to enchant us for reasons that none can entirely explain so long after it ceased to exist – ROME. It enchanted Justinian as well, it motivated his every breath, for that reason he bears remembering this day.

Justinian ruled Rome (and hence the known world) for 38 years, rising to the throne 51 years after the last Western Emperor was forced off the throne by the Goth warlord Odoacer. This new Caesar did not accept the status quo of a dismembered Empire where barbarian princes ran roughshod over Roman peoples and principles. Eastern Emperors that had ruled before him, after the fall of the West, seemed resigned to this new, diminished, belittled Rome but not Justinian. He dedicated his life to stitching the Empire back together – his unequalled general by the name of Belisarius took a handful of elite Roman knights and reconquered Africa and Italy, defeating vastly superior barbarian armies in the process.

Although Justinian was known by contemporaries as the Last Roman, the very last Caesar of Rome, Constantine XI “Palaiologos” would die in 1465, nine hundred years later, scant decades before Columbus set sail for the New World. Yet Justinian was very much the last Caesar of the ancient world. Many scholars have sought to explain why the Western Roman Empire declined prior to Justinian’s ascension, and to distill the world-rending pressures that would forever change Rome after Justinian (I would warmly recommend “Justinian’s Flea” by William Rosen for any interested in a brilliant and unconventional analysis of Rome’s transition into the Dark Ages – for those interested in a fictional account of his reign I’d be honored if you would see my trilogy on the subject, the “Legend of Africanus” on Amazon).

That said, it is worth repeating a few of the simple reasons why Justinian’s life represents such a milestone in world history and why his controversial reign marks the end of the Ancient World. Here is a short list of my reasons why this man should matter to you.

– Justinian was the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as his native tongue (after him they would speak Greek first, Latin as an afterthought if at all).

– His remarkable compilation of a thousand years of Roman law formed the basis of most modern Western democracies, continuing to provide their legal framework to this day.

– His legal reforms allowed woman to inherit property and decreed that the beaches of his territory were public property and could not be taken as private property nor could access to them be blocked (a tradition that is still enshrined in our legal system).

– He was the last Caesar to rule over a Roman Empire that included the city of Rome amongst its dominions (thanks to General Flavius Belisarius – another contender for the title of “Last Roman”).

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY PERHAPS, while Justinian lived, Rome remained ‘The One’ – after him, she gradually became one amongst many. She would wax and wane over the next nine hundred years and for as long as there was a Caesar on the Bosporus she would influence the world in infinite ways large and small, but never again as she did under Justinian.

On This Day – 9/13/533 – Belisarius Recovers Africa for Rome

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ Leave a comment

IMG_0717Humble milestones like the one picture here marked each mile throughout the Roman highway system, spanning the 250,000 miles of roadway that once stretched from modern Scotland to Yemen.

The milestones allowed the traveller to know precisely where they stood in relation to their departure point and destination, long before our slavish devotion to smart phones and GPS.

In what had been Roman Africa, stolen by the Vandals 100 years before, there stood such a stone on the approach to Carthage from the east on the ancient Roman highway that ran along the coast. It was the tenth milestone from Carthage, known simply as Decimum Miliare (the tenth mile).

At the tenth milestone (Ad Decimum), on this day – September 13th of 533 – the Roman Army led by General Flavius Belisarius (pictured here) met the Vandal King Gaiseric in a battle that would change the course of history.  Belisarius

The world fully expected the Romans to fail as Roman armies had failed in the field against the Vandals and their Germanic ‘barbarian’ cousins for generations. The Romans were 1,000 miles from home – having set sail with an invasion armada for the first time in decades (on ships that were specially built for the purpose since Rome no longer possessed a deep water navy). If they lost to the Vandals there would be no retreat and no hope of reinforcements. The Western Roman Empire had already ceased to exist with Romulus Augustulus’ abdication in 476 (in great part due to the Vandal theft of Africa and their brutal sack of the City of Rome). If Belisarius lost the battle at the tenth milestone, the Eastern Roman Empire would be in grave jeopardy.

Belisarius and his Roman knights would triumph at Decimum Miliare against all odds and went on to extinguish the upstart Vandal kingdom and to bring Africa back into the Roman fold. This was the first in a string of stunning victories engineered by Belisarius that would restore much of the lost Western Empire in the name of the reigning Caesar, the Emperor Justinian. These recuperated lands (Africa, Italy, parts of Gaul and Hispania) would remain part of the Roman Empire until after Justinian’s death – the moment when the ancient world truly ended and the Dark Ages began.

This moment, the battle that became known as Ad Decimum, figures prominently in the second book of the Legend of Africanus series: Avenging Africanus (available at amazon.com here).

For those that would like to read more of the military history of Ad Decimum, see the excellent Byzantine Military blog on the subject by clicking here.

The Later Rome, A lot Like Us…

~ matthewjordanstorm ~ 2 Comments

“Dad, don’t take this personally, but I sort of prefer the early Romans to the later Romans…”

So announced my 10 year old yesterday afternoon. Granted, it’s an odd conversation anyway you slice it – the fellow is 10 years old after all. But leaving that aside, one understands his attraction to the polish and power of Octavian’s Rome, or Scipio’s Rome. Theirs was a Rome of potential, a Rome of power still-in-store, a world-beating Rome.
And yet I still gravitate to the later Rome, the Rome that snooty Victorians (and Hollywood along with the popular press) called “Byzantine”. For two hundred years we have denigrated them rather than giving these Romans – that survived everything that human-kind and nature could throw at them – their due. For 1,000 years after their cousins in the West gave up the ghost they survived (from 476 to 1453), managing a more mellow “greatness” than Old Rome despite overwhelming odds. Knowing that the proverbial writing was on the wall they soldiered on in philosophy, art, law, diplomacy, architecture, etc. for our benefit. In short, even though the darkness fell around them, the Eastern Roman Empire kept the flame of culture and civilization alive longer than anyone, even their own contemporaries, expected. In fact, they kept this flame burning just long enough for the semi-barbarous nation states of the West to “rediscover” it, to appropriate it as their own and to call it the “Renaissance”.
In the last few weeks two exciting archaeological discoveries caught my eye and reminded me (and the 10 year old) how great was the span of my preferred Rome – the Justinian-era Rome of the 6th century – centered in Constantinople. Enjoy this touch of their cool and immortal Empire as so much in our 2017 world seems to reek of shrill and decline.
ROME IN CHINA
The first of these discoveries surfaced last month in China, when archaeologists opened a mid-6th century tomb of a wealthy Chinese man and found what the archaeologists described as coins minted during the reign (and sporting the likeness) of Justinian the Great who ruled Rome from 527CE to 565CE. As described in the China Daily News:
“The tomb’s owner, Lu Chou, died in 548 and the burial artifacts excavated include intact colored pottery figurines, camel figures and, most importantly, two gold coins from the Eastern Roman Empire… The gold coins are thought to be the earliest foreign currency coins to have been found in China.”
Surprised? It makes one wonder why Marco Polo receives such adulation still for “opening up” China in 1271CE when the Romans had regular trade with China stretching back to the days of the Roman Republic. This Roman-Chinese relationship remained active up until (and beyond) Justinian’s reign as the recovery of these coins illustrates. Rome was extremely desirous of Chinese silk, one of the most mysterious and prized substances in the Empire for many centuries, used to clothe Emperors and the Senatorial class. In fact, it was during Justinian’s rule, and at his behest, that Roman spies (dressed as priests) smuggled silkworm nests out of China in hollow canes so that the Romans might begin to manufacture their own silk, thereby cutting out Persian and Arab middlemen.
This daring does not sound like the work of a “lesser” Rome to me.
Please see pictures of the coins, and the tomb in which they were found, in the first two images below.


ROME IN ISRAEL
Across the globe this week archaeologists announced the most exciting Justinian-era discovery in some years, a perfectly intact Greek inscription commemorating the construction of a hostel for Roman pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem (which at that time was known to Romans as Aelia Capitolina, as named some centuries before by the Roman Emperor Hadrian who rebuilt the city that had been destroyed by the Romans during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70CE).
Nothing similar had been found in Jerusalem since the 1970’s when archaeologists stumbled upon the Nea Church, built by the Emperor Justinian as a replica of Solomon’s original temple and believed to possibly housed the Treasure from Herod’s second temple, a treasure that had been recovered by Justinian’s great general Belisarius after he nearly single-handledly defeated the Vandals and recovered Roman Africa for the Empire (highlighted in my novel, “Avenging Africanus”).
So, Titus destroyed Jersusalem and committed countless atrocities on its Jewish residents in the process, Hadrian rebuilt (a pagan) Jerusalem, Constantine made her a Christian city and Justinian made her a major Roman city, the most important city of Roman Palaestina.
The triumphant, miraculous Greek inscription recovered this week had been buried just below the surface of Jerusalem’s Old City for 1,500 years and escaped certain destruction by a matter of mere hours, since the area where it was located was to be leveled and excavated the following day in order to lay communications cables outside the American Consulate in Jerusalem. Justinian’s words come directly to us thanks to sheer chance, discovered on the very last day of the dig! Had one more day passed this message from the latter-day Romans would have been pulverized so that the latter-day Americans might send their messages more efficiently.


The Greek inscription was deciphered by the Hebrew University’s Dr. Leah Di Segni, an expert on ancient Greek inscriptions and reads as follows:
“In the time of our most pious emperor Flavius Justinian, also this entire building Constantine the most God-loving priest and abbot, established and raised, in the 14th indiction.”
The archaeologist who discovered it believes that it was written to commemorate the founding of the building — presumed to be a pilgrim hostel — by a priest named Constantine, the ‘hegumen’ of Jerusalem. The word “indiction,” said Di Segni, “is an ancient method of counting years, for taxation purposes. Based on historical sources, the mosaic can be dated to the year 550/551 CE.”
So, in short, our ‘later’ Romans, our much maligned Byzantines, traded with China, sheltered pilgrims in Jerusalem, and created works of enduring beauty and influence as the wider world crumbled about them. These are not the achievements that will necessarily hold a child’s attention, nor will it attract Hollywood’s celebrity, but for my druthers it does not get much better than this.
And finally, at the end of a long hot summer where there has been much (too much) talk of the USA’s decline and fall, I for one take heart from Rome’s endurance. She waxed and waned but she survived, inspired, and remained relevant even after “early” turned to “late”, lighting the way forward for those who came after.