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SIC TRANSIT GLORIA
ANCYRAE:
THE
REMNANTS OF ROMAN ANCYRA
Sometime
between 25-20 BC, the kingdom of Galatia was annexed to the
Roman Empire to form the province of the same name, with Ancyra
as its metropolis, or capital. For about 600 years
thereafter, Ancyra was a thriving Classical city, although
hardly anything survives to indicate its importance and
prosperity in the Roman and Late Roman period. The few remains
that are visible, however, are each in their own way important
monuments, some of them even being of more than local
significance, as this article will attempt to show.nbsp;
The best known of these remnants is without a doubt the
so-called ‘Temple Augustus’, adjacent to the Haci Bayram Camii.
It was built sometime before the death of Augustus in AD 14, and
was probably originally dedicated to Roma and the Deified Julius
Caesar. Despite limited excavation in 1926, at Atatürk’s
personal initiative, there is still some controversy about its
original form and appearance. The consensus is that it was
originally constructed as a
simple four-columned or tetrastyle temple, in the Ionic Order,
and that at a later
‘Temple Augustus’
period, it was enclosed with a surrounding colonnade in the
Corinthian Order, with eight columns at the front, thus becoming
an octostyle pseudo-dipteral
structure. At some unknown date, but after
395, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman
Empire, the temple was converted into a church, an apse and
underground martyrium, for displaying relics, being added
at the east end. It
appears to have remained in use as a church until 806, when
Ancyra fell to the Arabs, and its bronze doors were removed for
display in Baghdad. Then, in the late 14th or early
15th century, when the Haci Bayram Camii was
constructed, it was converted into a medrese, and
apparently continued to function in this way until the 1920’s.
In about AD 19, it was decided to inscribe the full text of
Augustus’ own record of his achievements on the walls of the
cella, the central part of the temple, in both Latin and
Greek. This document, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (‘The
Deeds of the Divine Augustus’), is an unique source of
information for the Augustan period, as was already recognized
in the 17th century, for it gives a comprehensive
description of Augustus’ domestic and foreign policies – in his
own words. As such, while it compliments to some extent the
record we have of Augustus’ reign provided by Suetonius in his
The Twelve Caesars, it tells us so much more, and is
indeed an inscription of world-wide significance. In addition,
there is good reason to believe that the Res Gestae
provided the model for Atatürk’s own Nutuk of 19**,
making this a monument of unique national significance. Sad to
report, therefore, that since 1937, when Atatürk ordered the
inscription to be revealed for public display, it has suffered
badly from pollution, large sections of it having eroded
‘Temple Augustus’ plan
away. Since the 1980’s, the Greek part of the Res Gestae
has been permanently covered for its own protection, although
the Latin text is still open to the elements. One can only hope
that greater effort is devoted to finding a way of conserving
both text and monument, and that these are once again reopened
for the public to enjoy, as Atatürk himself wished.
Some 175 m. south-east of the temple, half-way up Hisarparký
Caddesi, is Roman Ancyra’s second oldest and certainly least
well known monument. This is the theatre, discovered by chance
and subsequently excavated in the 1980’s. From that time on, the
ruins have been left open to the elements, and have deteriorated
to a considerable extent, being used for a while as a rubbish
dump, and often inhabited by a host of undesirable and dubious
characters – who, it has to be said, viewed visiting scholars in
exactly the same way! However, the Ankara municipal authorities
have recently enclosed the site with an iron fence, and there
are hopes that it will eventually be conserved and opened for
visits.
The theatre itself has a cavea, or seating area, partly
cut from the living rock of the lower slopes of the Kaledaðý,
with the upper levels built of the local andesite stone. There
were at least 20 tiers of seats, suggesting a seating capacity
of some 10-15,000, with four separate access stairways. The
scaenae frons (stage building), with its usual three
doorways, was also built of andesite, and elaborately decorated
with statuary, although the stage itself in its original form
was evidently of wood. Although the basic plan of the theatre is
the usual ‘D’-shape typical of the Roman period, certain details
of the entrance arrangements are without parallel in Anatolia,
although they are similar to those found at the small south
theatre of Jerash, a structure
The theater
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1995)
of
Flavian date. That apart, inscriptions reveal that this became
the location for the agones mystikoi, an artistic
festival dedicated to Dionysus and Hadrian, and probably
inaugurated in the emperor’s presence in 117. According to an
inscription of 7 December 129, the agones included
performances by singers accompanying themselves on the
Kithara, or lyre.
Of
probably the same general date as the theatre was Ancyra’s
aqueduct, although all that can be seen of this are the numerous
pierced blocks of stone now built into the early medieval
defences on the Kaledaðý. These blocks, with their female and
male joints at opposite ends, indicate that Ancyra’s aqueduct
belonged to the inverted siphon type, used for carrying water
across a valley from one height to another. The course and
precise date of the system are unknown, but as the majority of
the blocks are re-used in the south-east sections of the
Kaledaðý defences,
Plan of theater
(Drawing: B. Claasz Coockson)
it
is assumed that the aqueduct passed nearby, suggesting its
source was probably near the headwaters of the Ankara Çay on the
slopes of Kure Daðý, some 30 km. distant. As for its date, all
that can be said is that the earliest known inverted siphon
system in Asia Minor is thought to be that at Patara, built in
the Flavian period.
The next oldest of Ancyra’s visible Roman monuments is the
so-called ‘Caracallan Baths’, a large bath-house probably built
in the mid- or late-2nd century, and apparently largely
destroyed
during the Persian invasion of
the early 7th century. Even so, substantial sections
of this complex
were still standing high above ground in the mid-19th
century, when they were
The west end of the stage
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1995)
recorded by French antiquarians under the local name of
‘Timerlane Sarayý’, it being believed by Angora’s citizens that
Timur-i Lang (Tamerlane) had stayed there in 1402, when he was
attacking their city. By the early 20th century,
these remains had entirely disappeared and what remained was
re-discovered quite by chance in 1931, during the building of
Çankýrý Caddesi. After further excavations in 1938-44, the
exposed ruins were taken into public ownership, and since the
1980’s, has served as an open-air museum, many of the hundreds
of Ancyra’s classical inscriptions being displayed in its
grounds.
The bath-house belongs to a group of Anatolian bath-houses known
as the ‘Bath-gymnasium’ type, in which the baths proper were
combined with a large palaestra, or exercise space. They
perhaps covered an area of about 160 x 200 m, making them one of
the largest bath-houses of their kind – if, that is, the
building was ever completed. Excavation of the extreme south-east
of the complex in 1944 uncovered walls and rooms of a quite
dissimilar plan to those on the north-west. The published report
gives no information of date or the physical relationship
between these remains and the bath-house proper, but from their
description, it seems they might belong to the very late Roman
period.
The bath-house walls were built of alternating courses of
4-rowed brick and stone, with local ‘marble’ used for decorative
details.
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The
palaestra
had 32 columns on each side, each c. 6m high with
Corinthian capitals, supporting an inscribed architrave. The
central room on the east side may have been where statues of the
emperors were displayed, the rooms to the north presumably
offices, and the paired rooms on the north and south sides of
the palaestra perhaps libraries and/or lecture halls. The
main bathing complex itself was fronted by a range of three
rooms, the central one with a natatio, or swimming pool,
the north and south rooms, with their hypocausts, presumably the
apodyteria, the changing rooms. Behind this range was a
centrally-located tepidarium, a room of medium heat, with
a plunge-pool and flanking rooms, while the south-west part of
the complex was taken up by the caldarium, the hottest
room.
Plan of the bath-house
(Drawing: B. Claasz Coockson)
Looking at what are essentially the foundations, it needs a
great leap of the imagination to imagine the interior
of the bath-house as it was, with vaulted rooms some 20
m. high, lavishly decorated with mosaics, walls covered with
white and coloured marble veneer and sculptured friezes, and
floors of paved marble as well as mosaic. It is even harder to
imagine how it must have looked when – as Ancyra’s premier
social meeting place – it was thronged with visitors.
Fortunately, a letter written by the mid-1st century
orator Seneca the Younger helps in this regard. Forced to
overnight next to a municipal bath-house in Italy, he records
how he was unable to sleep because there was:
‘(A)ll sorts of noise, enough to make you hate your ears!
Body-builders exercise, throwing their hands about with weights,
and I hear their grunts each time they expel treasured breath...
(And there is) the noise of a grouchy fellow, or a thief caught
in the act, or the man who loves the sound of his own voice in
the bath - not to mention those who belly-flop with
General view of the bath-complex and Ulus in the background
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1993)
The remains of the hypocaust-system
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1993)
a
generally assumed to be the same structure. On the other hand,
the architrave fragments are decorated in typical mid/late 2nd
century style, and bear an inscription commemorating another
Ancyran, Titus Cornelius, for his gift of an unknown building to
the metropolis, perhaps this building. Only future
excavation might solve this riddle – and also exactly how the
south-east part of the bath-house relates to the main complex.
The underground service spaces (1993)
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1993)
It
is uncertain if Ancyra suffered directly from the Gothic attacks
of the 250’s-260’s: the area surely did, and the Goths were not
loath to raid the undefended cities of the region. Ancyra
certainly fell to the army of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra in 271,
however, to be recaptured by Aurelian later that same year. It
is presumably in connection with one of these raids that we
should associate two late Roman inscriptions from Ancyra which
refer to the construction of civic defences, which may well be
represented by a 12 m. high section of walling recently revealed
immediately west of the ‘Temple of Augustus’. Built mainly of
stone blocks, with alternating tile-courses in the towers, and
including three projecting 4 m. wide square towers, the walling
contains several reused column shafts, but no other
architectural material. Although there is no evidence to
indicate the precise course of the wall circuit, it evidently
excluded the area of Ancyra to the west, including the
‘Caracallan Baths’. As such, in its limited perimeter as well as
its construction method, it closely resembles the walls erected
at several cities in Gaul in the mid-3rd century, as
for example Amiens and Bavai.
The latest dated and visible monument of Ancyra is the reputed
‘Column of Julian’ in the
Hükümet Meydaný, although this is not in its original position!
It originally stood at the extreme south-west of the square, but
was moved at Atatürk’s direction in the 1920’s, when work began
on building the original Baþ Bakanlýk, now the Maliye Bakanlýðý:
as Hükümet Meydaný occupies what was always an open space in
Ottoman Angora, the column’s location strongly suggests that
this space originated as the Ancyra’s agora, or
commercial centre. As for the column itself, it stands about 15
m. high, standing on a rectangular base with a horizontally
grooved shaft. The capital – now crowned with a stork’s nest,
but originally perhaps with a statue – has an acanthus leaf and
blank medallion ornamentation of a type which can be dated to
the
6th century.
‘Column of Julian’
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1993)
What or who the column may have originally commemorated is
unknown. Its modern name seems to date from
the 1930’s. True,
the emperor Julian stayed in Ankara - but that was in 362, some
300 years before the column was erected. On the other hand,
antiquarian records indicate that already by the 16th
century, the column was popularly known by the citizens of
Angora as the Minaret of Belkis, the legendary Queen of Sheba,
although again, what suggested this connection is obscure.
Siphon elements of the aqueduct reused in the defense walls of
the Kale
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 2003)
Such, then, are the visible remains of Roman Ancyra. And it has
to be said that almost nothing else is known of the many temples
and
public buildings which once existed, according to inscriptions,
coins and literary sources, never mind the more than 1,000
houses for its population. Despite Atatürk’s own personal
interest in Ancyra’s Roman past, once the place became the
capital of
the new Republic of Turkey in
October 1923, the process of obliterating what survived of
Ancyra began in earnest to make Ankara a modern
capital city worthy of the name. That process continues, and we
can only hope that more enlightened attitudes will again soon
prevail before what remains is finally lost without record.
FURTHER READING
Akok, M., 1968, ‘Ankara Þehrindeki Roma Hamamý’ Türk
Arkeoloji Dergisi 17 (1968) 5-37.
Bayburtluoðlu, Ý., 1987, ‘Ankara Antik Tiyatrosu’, Anadolu
Medeniyetleri Müzesi – 1986 Yýllýðý (Ankara 1987), 39-43.
Bennett, J., 2003, ‘Ancyra, Metropolis Provinciae Galatiae’,
in P.R.Wilson (ed), The Archaeology of Roman Towns
(Oxford 2003), 1-15.
Cooke, S.D., 1998, The Monuments of Roman Ancyra Reviewed
(unpublished MA Dissertation, Bilkent Üniversitesi, Ankara).
Erzen, A., 1946, Ýlkcaðda Ankara (Ankara 1946).
Guterbock, H.G., 1989, ‘The Temple of Augustus in the 1930s’, in
K.Emre, B.Hrouda, M.Mellink and N Özgüç (eds), Anatolia and
the Near East Studies in Honor of Taþýn Özgüç
(Ankara 1989), 155-157.
Krencker, D., and Schede, M., 1936, Der Tempel in Ankara
(Berlin 1936)
Julian Bennett
Newsletter No. 2
- 2003, Pg. 36
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