This entry was posted on 3/15/2011 1:47 PM and is filed under Footnotes.
From the safety of thousands of miles away, we have been awestruck witnesses to the terrible tragedy that has befallen the good people of Sendai, Japan on 11 March 2011 (1). Even a nation used to earthquakes and a people drilled from birth to deal with the problems of tsunamis – it is after all a Japanese word – could not have prepared them for the sheer scale of devastation brought by the events of that dreadful Friday. Thirty feet high waves racing ashore at 40 mph overwhelmed barriers and buildings, tossing cars and ships miles inland as if they were children’s toys, and as quickly receded back snatching property and people into the briney depths. Once thriving communities have been wiped-off the face of the earth. Untold thousands have lost their lives. Radioactive particulate from the damaged nuclear power stations may have contaminated the region threatening those still living. Rolling blackouts now affect other parts of the island. It is a very grim situation. It will be years before Japan fully recovers.
Yet, amidst the current heartbreak and pain I have reason to be optimistic about the future. I say so by glancing back over the past. The ancient world, too, had its unfair share of natural disasters, yet people of those times found ways to bounce back. Where to start? The mother of all civilization extinguishing events was the legendary fall of Atlantis. I say legendary: Plato described the place as though it had actually existed in the two dialogues Critias and Timmaeus he wrote around 360BC and which are the only surviving records to describe it in any detail (2). Plutarch mentions that Plato got the story from Solon who traveled to Egypt (3). There he
spent some time in studies with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Saïs, who were very learned priests. From these, as Plato says, he heard the story of the lost Atlantis, and tried to introduce it in a poetical form to the Greeks. (Plutarch, Life of Solon 26).
The description of the concentric city’s demise sounds convincingly like an earthquake and the ensuing tsunami:
But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. (Plato, Timmaeus)
Solon’s hosts may well have believed the story to be true – or perhaps they spun the Greek tourist a yarn to earn a few obols for the temple donation box. In the modern era, the publication of Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World in 1882 immediately caused a mania for the “lost continent” and set off numerous quests to find Atlantis (4). Plato wrote that Atlantis was bigger than Libya and Asia put together so it should surely be easy to find – except its discovery has eluded explorers. Many places have been proposed. Whether Atlantis is the Mycenaean civilization at Knossos, Crete or Thera (Santorini), or Dogger Bank, Ireland; or the controversial new theory advancing the salt marsh region called Marisma de Hinojos in the Donaña National Park, near the city of Cádiz in Spain; or any number of other candidates, remains to be seen (5). Maybe it was a legend after all. Intriguingly, if it was a real place people must have survived from Atlantis: there had to have been survivors for the descriptions of the city to have been handed down for the Egyptians to record.
Despite their best efforts, even the ancient world’s master builders, the Romans, could not prevent the Tiber River from flooding their own city. In fact it was an almost annual event, as the Roman annalist cum historian Cassius Dio routinely records (6). The meandering river which slices the eternal city in two regularly burst its banks and inundated whole sections of the city with such force in one year it took away one of the stone bridges and in another year “made the city navigable for boats during three days” (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 55.22.3 and 55.33.5). Dio records that when Emperor Augustus left his stepson Drusus the Elder in charge of Gaul in 13BC and arrived back in Rome he found the city flooded, which spoiled a few plans:
Now it chanced that the news of his coming reached the city during those days when Cornelius Balbus was celebrating with spectacles the dedication of theatre which is even today called by his name; and Balbus accordingly began to put on airs, as if it were he himself that was going to bring Augustus back – although he was unable even to enter his theatre, except by boat, on account of the flood of water caused by the Tiber. (Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.25.1).
The flood of 5AD which continued through 6AD, however, affected many of the warehouses along the riverside storing the grain by soaking the vital supply doled out to the city’s poor. The result was a citywide famine. Since Rome relied on Egypt for its grain supply and the ships could not safely cross the Mediterranean during the winter, stores ran perilously low. Drastic measures were brought in: the well-to-do were strongly advised to leave Rome and retreat to their summer homes; gladiators were relocated and slaves for sale had to be moved at least 100 miles outside the city’s perimeter; the courthouses were closed, and religious festivals and feasts were suspended. Black marketers exploited the impoverished and hungry left behind, and Augustus set up a panel to investigate and enforce the law. The fact that the members of the board, all ex-consuls, had to be accompanied by lictors – the Roman equivalent of the Secret Service – who carried fasces (an ax in a bundle of rods) suggests how much of a threat the VIPs faced from both the angry mob, and the crooks selling grain at exorbitant prices.
As if that was not bad enough that same year a fire broke out, razing large areas of the city and leaving many homeless. One good thing to come out of the tragedy, however, was Rome’s first fire service:
[Augustus] organized a company of freedmen, in seven divisions, to render assistance on such occasions, and appointed a knight in command over them, expecting to disband them in a short time. He did not do so, however; for he found by experience that the aid they gave was most valuable and necessary, and so retained them. These night-watchmen exist to the present day [200sAD], as a special corps, one might say, recruited no longer from the freedmen only, but from the other classes as well. They have barracks in the city and draw pay from the public treasury. (Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.26.4-5)
Despite lightening being the usual culprit, arson was suspected. The plebs grew restless and there was talk of sedition and riot. The city was in peril from within. A scapegoat was needed, and one was found. A man suspected of setting the city alight was sought. The public was invited to come forward – that phrase beloved of crime investigation shows on television today – enticed with rewards for information, but that just added to the commotion. Just in time, the grain ships arrived with their precious cargoes. To celebrate, Germanicus and Tiberius laid on gladiatorial games in honour of Drusus the Elder, which went down rather well with the crowd. In the Roman world, nothing worked its charm better on a restless mob that letting it cheer as one guy got beaten up by another in the arena.
Nevertheless, the floods continued. A few years later, in 12AD, even the Circus Maximus was submerged by floodwater and it was only after it had dried out that Germanicus could lay on his spectacular blood games in honour of god Mars. (Two hundred lions are recorded has having been killed during that event). Damp seats could not be allowed to get in the way of a Roman’s entertainment and something had to be done. The politicians got involved. The results are recorded by the doyen of Roman historians, Tacitus (7). He writes:
A question was then raised in the Senate by Arruntius and Ateius whether, in order to restrain the inundations of the Tiber, the rivers and lakes which swell its waters should be diverted from their courses. A hearing was given to embassies from the municipal towns and colonies, and the people of Florentia begged that the Clanis might not be turned out of its channel and made to flow into the Arnus, as that would bring ruin on themselves. Similar arguments were used by the inhabitants of Interamna. The most fruitful plains of Italy, they said, would be destroyed if the river Nar (for this was the plan proposed) were to be divided into several streams and overflow the country. Nor did the people of Reate, remain silent. They remonstrated against the closing up of the Veline Lake, where it empties itself into the Nar, “as it would burst in a flood on the entire neighbourhood. Nature had admirably provided for human interests in having assigned to rivers their mouths, their channels, and their limits, as well as their sources. Regard, too, must be paid to the different religions of the allies, who had dedicated sacred rites, groves, and altars to the rivers of their country. Tiber himself would be altogether unwilling to be deprived of his neighbour streams and to flow with less glory.” Either the entreaties of the colonies, or the difficulty of the work or superstitious motives prevailed and they yielded to Piso’s opinion, who declared himself against any change. (Tacitus, Annals 1.79).
Predictably the status quo prevailed. Yet the river continued to cause havoc year after year:
When now the river Tiber overflowed a large part of the city, so that people went about in boats, most people regarded this, also, as an omen, like the violent earthquakes which shook down a portion of the city wall and like the frequent thunderbolts which caused wine to leak even from vessels that were sound. (Dio Cassius, Roman History, 57.13.7)
A lasting solution surely had to be found? The Romans were, after all, supposed to be the world’s best civil engineers; there was not much they did not know about concrete, and in particular, concrete that set in water. In the time honoured tradition of politicians of all ages, that meant setting up a committee:
the emperor, however, thinking that it was due to the great over-abundance of surface water, appointed five senators, chosen by lot, to constitute a permanent board to look after the river, so that it should neither overflow in winter nor fail in summer, but should maintain as even a flow as possible all the time. (Dio Cassius, Roman History, 57.13.7-8)
It is not recorded if the ancient ‘Tiber River Authority’ did much of any significance. Perhaps in the end, the Romans realized that engineering cannot solve all problems caused by Nature. They had chosen to build their city amongst the valleys of the Seven Hills and that was the price of being there. Learning to live with Nature was the solution, despite its inconvenience. Fortunately, the city of Rome was crisscrossed with a network of sewers that doubled as storm drains. The greatest of these was the Cloaca Maxima, first excavated in the 600sBC and later overhauled by Augustus’ Mister Fixit and master plumber, Marcus Vispanius Agrippa (8). Without these drains the situation could have been a lot worse. The Colosseum – the great Flavian Amphitheatre – in fact, sat on what was a marsh that had to be constantly drained.
Flooding and fire routinely impacted the city of Rome. Elsewhere, natural disasters also took their toll. Asia Minor was particularly at risk from earthquakes and their effects could be every bit as devastating to the populations as the tsunami that just swept Japan:
That same year [17AD] twelve famous cities of Asia fell by an earthquake in the night, so that the destruction was all the more unforeseen and fearful. Nor were there the means of escape usual in, such a disaster, by rushing out into the open country, for there people were swallowed up by the yawning earth. Vast mountains, it is said, collapsed; what had been level ground seemed to be raised aloft, and fires blazed out amid the ruin. (Tacitus, Annals 2.47)
On hearing the terrible news the Romans responded with their prayers and moneybags, just as modern people do when answering humanitarian appeals for help. The then emperor, Tiberius, set an example and dug into his own coffers:
The calamity fell most fatally on the inhabitants of Sardis, and it attracted to them the largest share of sympathy. The emperor promised ten million sesterces, and remitted for five years all they paid to the exchequer or to the emperor's purse. Magnesia, under Mount Sipylus, was considered to come next in loss and in need of help. The people of Temnus, Philadelpheia, Aegae, Apollonis, the Mostenians, and Hyrcanian Macedonians, as they were called, with the towns of Hierocaesarea, Myrina, Cyme, and Tmolus, were; it was decided, to be exempted from tribute for the same time. (Tacitus, Annals 2.47)
Imagine that: reconstruction funds and tax exemptions while the community rebuilds? Now there’s an idea for modern governments to consider in times of emergency. Then as now, senatorial oversight was required, of course observing the political niceties,
and someone was to be sent from the Senate to examine their actual condition and to relieve them. Marcus Aletus, one of the ex-praetors, was chosen, from a fear that, as an ex-consul was governor of Asia, there might be rivalry between men of equal rank, and consequent embarrassment. (Tacitus, Annals 2.47)
Political rivalries? Political embarrassment? In a time of crisis? It seems some things are as old as civilisation itself. Politics notwithstanding, the great resilience of the human race means that we are able to deal with natural catastrophes – and recover from them. It will be hard and expensive, but the tough Japanese will survive and rebuild, as our human forebears did before us. The existence of our species today is proof of that.
Lindsay Powell is a historian and the author of the groundbreaking book, Eager for Glory: The Untold Story of Drusus the Elder, Conqueror of Germania. He divides his time between Austin, Texas and Wokingham, England. See his website at http://www.Lindsay-Powell.com
