Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

An extensive dwelling was built in the second half of the 2nd century between the Agora and the Caesareum to its east, south of the monumental portico linking the two areas. It was known as the House of Jason Magnus on the authority of the name found inscribed on a mosaic pavement in the Temple of Hermes associated with the complex.[1478] This range consisted originally of two distinct buildings each occupying its own insula. The more westerly section included the above mentioned temple of Hermes, first constructed in the 2nd century before the common era, and thought by Mingaz-zini to have been part of a gymnasium.[1479] After the Jewish revolt the two insulae were united into one building-complex which embodied a twin temple in its north-east quarter and contained in its western portion an impressive Rhodian peristyle court forming an approach to a triclinium on the south.[1480] Mingazzini understood the entire 2nd-century complex as a gymnasium, but Goodchild[1481] inclined rather to see it as a public residence, the mansion of the city’s gymnasiarch.

The interior of the Temple of Hermes was severely damaged in 115, though its exterior apparently remained intact. The statue-base in its cella, which had preceded the inscribed mosaic dating to the time of Commodus, had been wrenched out of its bearing[1482] evidently to displace the image standing on it. The subsequent unified complex of the two insulae included an atrium on the north side whose mosaic resembled the mosaics associated with the initial repair of the Baths in the Sanctuary of Apollo immediately after the revolt. The columns of the atrium, moreover, displayed in their second phase a technique similar to that of the columns in the basilica of the Caesareum in its post-revolt rehabilitation. Minor repairs to the great peristyle were also ascribed to the period after the Jewish revolt.[1483]

The Agora was linked with the south-western corner of the Caesareum to east by an ornamental colonnade, which adorned the street forming the north limit of the House of Jason Magnus. The colonnade’s south wall was adorned with statues of Hermes and Heracles set against pilasters, which were found lying in the street. The Italian researches of 1957-1961 showed that the colonnade had been built in the hellenistic period and subsequently twice reconditioned, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. respectively.[1484] The first repair took place after the Jewish revolt,[1485] when the intervals between the pilasters of the southern wall were blocked up, and the row of columns along the interior of the colonnade renewed. To the north of the colonnade and east of the Agora lay a third-century peristyle house, known from an inscription as “the house of Hesychios”; on the south front of the same insula to westward a hoard of 1,158 bronze and 116 silver coins was found, ending with issues of the Emperor Trajan, and clearly deposited at the time of the tumultus Iudaicus.[1486]

The Caesareum is the most important public edifice known in the south-east of the city. It is a large rectangular enclosure measuring 96 by 85 metres, entered through monumental propylaea of the Doric order in the east ancl south sides, and by a further simple entrance at the south-west angle. The peripheral wall encloses an interior Doric colonnaded peristyle on the west, east and south sides, but the northern is closed by a basilica, with exedra and tribunal at the west end.[1487] The present Caesareum is now known to be a secondary structure[1488] overlying an earlier hellenistic or Roman enclosure, probably a gymnasium. The present structure dates from the beginning of the ist century A.D. according to inscriptions on the eastern and southern propylaea.[1489] The basilica, on the other hand, is thought to have been built under Trajan.[1490]

Part of the most important inscription evidencing the destruction of the Caesareum during the Jewish revolt was found incorporated in the inner southern anta of the eastern entrance. Another lies in the south-east of the enclosure, and a third fragment has also been recognized. Although the fragments are small, what remains of the inscription suffices to show that it was a lengthy bilingual text which probably adorned the architrave of one of the internal colonnades of the building. It can be restored as follows:“The Emperor Hadrian (his official titles and functions follow) ordered the restoration, on behalf of the city of Cyrene, of the Caesareum which was destroyed (and burnt?) in the Jewish revolt (ἐν πολέμωι — tumultu Iudaica).”[1491] The date given is in Hadrian’s second term of tribunician power and in his second consulship (A.D. 118).[1492]

Another inscription was cut contemporarily in the architrave of the southern interior colonnade of the basilica, recording the structures repaired by (or in the reign of) Hadrian at the beginning of 119.[1493]

The apse of the basilica contained a podium with a dedication to Hadrian made in 118.[1494] A fragment of slab also bearing a dedication to the Emperor lies in the south colonnade of the enclosure.[1495] A fifth inscription, discovered near the Caesareum, was published in its entirety in 1958,[1496] being dedicated to Hadrian in his thirteenth tribunician power and third consulate (A.D. 128/129). The Emperor is here termed “founder, nurse and law-giver” (κτίσταν καὶ τροφ[έα καί] νομο [θέταν]).

Three fragments of an inscription are to be seen outside the south-eastern comer of the enclosure.The first mentions the tumultus ludaicus, the second [co]mmilitonum, and the third the words customarily commemorating a work of building or reconstruction, to wit: [fa] ciendum c[uravit].[1497] Gasperini has further published a fragmentary inscription found in the insula of the so-called “house of Jason Magnus”, with the words [--Caes] ar[eu]m tumultu I[udaico dim turn].[1498]

Ward-Perkins summed up a detailed study of the Caesareum in the following words:[1499] “It was certainly in existence at the beginning of the second century, and was restored by Hadrian after the Jewish revolt.” As to the Temple of Dionysus which is situated in the centre of the enclosure, and was a later addition after the erection of the Caesareum, he writes: “There does not seem any particular reason to doubt that the statue of Dionysus found within the ruins is the original second-century cult statue.”.[1500] He dates the temple to the 2nd century, “probably earlier in the second century A.D. rather than later.”[1501]

The Temple of Zeus, the largest of the city’s places of worship, which stands on the eastern hill, has yielded impressive evidence of destruction by the Jewish insurgents. It was partially exposed in 1861,[1502] but its systematic investigation began only in 1927,[1503] and was renewed between 1939 and 1942,[1504] further exploration being carried out in 1954 and subsequently from 1967 onward.[1505]