Fortified City Research Articles

The Pseudo-History of Messenia Unplugged

Some common knowledge about the Messenians to begin with. Dwelling in the southwestem portion of the Greek Peloponnese, these people were conquered by the Spartans in the course of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., although the detailed course of this conquest, and the precise nature and organization of the warring parties, remain opaque. What seems clearer is that those defeated who did not flee into exile were transformed into the famous helots, once described as between free men and slaves (Poll. 3.83). The few glimpses of helot life we possess from literary accounts, such as those of Tyrtaeus or Plutarch, are grim, and the Messenians appear periodically to have rebelled against their fate, most famously around the mid-fifth century B.C.E.' Liberation only came, however, in the early fourth century (ca. 370/69 B.C.E.), with the net result that the region lay under Spartan domination for the not inconsiderable period of some three-and-a-half or four centuries. Only with the coming of Epaminondas were the helots emancipated, numerous exiles reinstated, the monstrously fortified city of Messene built, and the Messenians free to ret(ake their place in the wider Greek world. Among other things, at this time we begin to get written accounts of the history of the Messenians.

Dido Rediviva, of: Liever Turks dan Paaps Een opstandig schilderij door Gillis Coignet

AbstractIn the Vleeshuis museum in Antwerp is a painting which is signed and dated G.COINGNET.FEC.1583 (note 1 and fig. 1). It allegedly represents 'Queen Dido, giving orders for Carthage to be built.' However, in the painting an architect is presenting the putative queen with a construction drawing (fig. 2) which bears the inscription PORTA DE LA GOLETA. La Goletta was a fortress built by Charles v to keep Tunis under Spanish control when he took possession of the city in 1535. In the 1560s, to cope with the threat of renewed Turkish attacks, La Goletta was substantially reinforced. Work was also begun on a new fort ('Nova arx') between Tunis and La Goletta. However, the Turks finally took both fortresses and the city itself in 1574. The conquest of 1574 is depicted and described in Civitates orbis terrarum by Braun and Hogenberg (note 7 and fig. 3). The authors suggest that the 'Nova arx' was modelled on the fortress of Antwerp. This edifice was built in 1568-69 by the Duke of Alva to subdue Antwerp, but after the initial success of the uprising against Spanish domination it was taken by the rebels and integrated in the city's fortifications. This was the situation in 1583, when Coignet painted his picture. The role assigned to the Antwerp guild of bricklayers and stone-masons in the painting is so prominent, that it is safe to assume that it was commissioned by the guild. In all probability it represents an anti-Spanish political programme. A further indication is provided by the drawing which is being presented to the queen; it bears a strong resemblance to the plan of Hadrian's port in ancient Ostia (note 11 and fig. 4). In Civitates orbis terrarum we read that the Turks, after their conquest of Tunis, razed the city's fortifications to the ground, replacing them by a naval port to make things as awkward as possible for the Catholic enemy. There is thus an obvious connection between La Goletta and a port of Antiquity; in that connection the role of the Turks also emerges. During the Dutch revolt against Spanish domination there was often talk of making overtures to the Turks, who, although not noted for their gentle disposition, were far more tolerant in matters of religion than the Hapsburgs. Indeed, one of the slogans of the revolt was 'sooner Turkish than popish'. There is also evidence of actual contacts between Antwerp and Constantinople during this period. The specific reference to La Goletta thus clearly indicates the intention of the painting: in analogy with the Turkish conquest of 1574, the Antwerp building trade guild assigned to Dido a new, allegorical role: that of ordering the conversion of a fortress erected by the enemy into a fortified port for the purpose of vexing the emperor of the Roman, c.q. the Roman-catholic realm. The link with the hated fortress which Alva had built for Antwerp is evident. There is little likelihood that plans were actually made to provide Antwerp with such a port; the painting probably had a propagandistic function. In 1585 the Duke of Parma definitively took the city for the king of Spain, and the fortress was separated from the fortifications again in order to quell any fresh uprisings. The fortress was pulled down in 1884; today the Museum of Fine Arts stands on the site.

Time and Order in Metropolitan Vienna: A Seizure of Schedules by Robert Rotenberg

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 187 the education of the entire intellectual elite and “altered mental perceptions of the city” (p. xxxvi). She addresses the fundamental interplay between military technology and Renaissance culture with a synthesizing sweep that rivals the best ofJ. R. Hale’s work. Poliak’s Checklist is a model guide: it is of interest to specialists concerned with military technology, Renaissance studies, or urban history and is capable of awakening in the general reader a desire for more knowledge. I hope other libraries possessing special collections with comparable, but undiscovered, strengths will be stimulated by Poliak’s success to commission similar works. I look forward to future works by Poliak and hope she will continue to study the fortified city in Europe. Michael Kucher Mr. Kucher is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Delaware. He is writing a dissertation on the urban infrastructure of late medieval Siena. Time and Order in Metropolitan Vienna: A Seizure ofSchedules. By Robert Rotenberg. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Pp· x + 262; notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $32.50. This book is both useful and problematic. It provides the specialist with much valuable information about the nature of contemporary Viennese schedules and their relation to everyday life in the Austrian capital, but the why of their origins is not as satisfactorily presented. This stems from the author’s analysis of Austrian history and culture as the basis for his discussion of how things are as they are. The approach is correct, but its execution leaves something to be desired. Robert Rotenberg’s thesis is that the conventional organization of time into schedules represents the creation of “an extraordinary instrument of power and domination precisely because it appears so conventional” (p. 2). When we work, eat, shop, and play shapes the patterns of our lives. Rotenberg applies this contention to Vienna by examining the daily schedules of Viennese from diverse occupations, including an executive, a factory worker, and a housewife. The daily rounds of these people demonstrate that the temporal options of the Viennese are as determined by the dictates of modern industrial, urban life as those of their counterparts in any other developed country. But there are idiosyncracies in the Viennese case, such as early shop closings, shorter work weeks, and an obsession with free time. The occurrence ofevents is influenced by these factors, and they in turn are affected by historical and cultural considerations. Roten­ berg recognizes this and attempts to go beyond his socioanthropological data to explain the process. 188 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE He is most effective in this regard when dealing with the post-1945 period. Rotenberg can point in these years to the decisions by business, government, labor, and agrarian interests in setting work schedules through the corporatist system of Sozialpartnerschaft as crucial to the schedules of everyday life. Since 1955, this has led to a decreasing work week and a rise in free time. The result is a highly structured daily existence embedded in a culture of regulation largely determined by political, economic, and social hierarchies. Rotenberg uses postwar history to account effectively for this recent Alltagsgeschichte of time, but when he strays from this era in search of its more distant origins he falters. Despite an unnecessary discussion of ancient and medieval Vienna, Rotenberg recognizes the baseline importance of the 18th century and its nascent bureaucratic conception of time and order, but in searching for the historical and cultural roots of Viennese schedules he concentrates on the 19th century, where the elucidation of his definition of modernism as change connected with “a greater con­ sciousness of social relations as the source of meaning” (p. 38) is on safer ground. Yet there are false steps here as well. Thus, the Christian Socialist, Karl Lueger, and the Social Democrat, Viktor Adler, are credited with starting the evolution of “a modernist political action program” (p. 44), only to have this contention contra­ dicted in the next six pages by the inclusion of Austrian liberals, such as Cajatan Felder, as coequals in the process. Similarly, Rotenberg confuses the enlightened conservatism of counts Eduard Taaffe and Leo Thun with the liberalism of...

A hellenistic inscription from Skotoussa (Thessaly) and the fortifications of the city

In 1983 the Larisa Museum received an inscribed stele, purporting to be from the farming area of Agia Triada. Even today, parts can be seen in this area of the fortifications of an ancient city, thought to be the Thessalian Skotoussa. The inscription comprises 154 lines, and is written in the Thessalian (Pelasgian) dialect; it dates from 197–185 BC. It is a decree of the city (which is now proved to be Skotoussa), and concerns the description of a zone inside and outside the city walls, which was to contain no privately owned land. The decree was passed as part of the reorganization of the defences of the city after the collapse of Macedonian supremacy in the region. The zone was defined in detail using as reference points the towers, distances between the towers, and other sections of the walls, as well as parts of the city adjoining the wall. The result of such a systematic body of cross-reference is a description of nearly the whole of the city's fortifications. Following a topographic survey of the Agia Triada region, and taking into account older surveys, a restoration of the course of the wall is attempted. Using the inscription as a guide, a comparison is made between the sections of the wall that are described, together with other place-names appearing in the inscription, and the surviving ruins at Agia Triada.

2 Chr 11:5-10 Fortified Cities List and the lmlk Stamps: Reply to Nadav Naʾaman

2 Chr 11:5-10 Fortified Cities List and the <i>lmlk</i> Stamps: Reply to Nadav Naʾaman

The Broken Wall, the Burning Roof and Tower: Pindar, Ol. 8.31–46

In the Eighth Olympian, for Alcimedon of Aegina, Pindar recounts a story (31–46) that, according to a notice in the scholia, is not found in earlier Greek literature. Aeacus was summoned from Aegina to Troy by Apollo and Poseidon to help in the construction of the city's fortifications. Smoke, says the poet, would one day rise from the very battlements Aeacus built. The wall newly completed, a portent appeared: three snakes tried to scale the ramparts but two fell to earth while one succeeded in entering the city. Apollo immediately interpreted this sign: Troy would be taken ‘owing to the work of Aeacus’ hand' and would, moreover, be taken ‘by the first and the fourth generations’.If there is literary invention here, it would seem that Pindar has drawn inspiration from three passages of our Iliad: (i) 7.452–3, Apollo and Poseidon toiled to build a wall for Laomedon; (ii) 6.433–4, there was one spot in the wall of Troy that was especially vulnerable; (iii) 2.308–29, the seer Calchas declares an omen involving a snake to signify the eventual destruction of Ilium.The general import of the passage is clear enough — descendants of Aeacus play a prominent part in the Trojan war and in the capture of the city. But the details of the portent and of the prophecy have caused much perplexity, for they cannot easily be made to correspond to the history they prefigure. It is the numbers in Pindar's account that are the chief source of confusion.On the model of the omen interpreted by Calchas (where a snake eating nine birds represents a lapse of nine years before the sack of the city) the three snakes in the Pindaric story might reasonably be expected to represent the lapse of three generations before Aeacus' great-grandson Neoptolemus played his conspicuous part in the final agony of Troy. But this interpretation of the portent forces us to explain away the fact that Troy was also destroyed by Aeacus' son, Telamon, as Pindar repeatedly insists in his Aeginetan odes (Nem. 3.37, 4.25; Isth. 6.26–31): if the snakes are taken to represent generations, one of the unsuccessful snakes in fact represents a successful conqueror. This is a disturbing inconcinnity.

Hezekiah's Fortified Cities and the "LMLK" Stamps

Il s'agit des 15 villes fortifiees pour defendre le royaume de Juda et que le Chroniste place sous le regne de Rehoboam (II Chroniques 11: 5-10): Bethleem, Etam, Tekoa, Beth-Tsur, Soko, Adullam, Gath, Maresha, Ziph, Adoraim, Lakish, Azeka, Zora, Ayyalon et Hebron. Sur la base des donnees archeologiques (notamment des sceaux Lmlk) et bibliques, l'A. montre que ces fortifications ont ete faites par Ezechias, en prevision de la campagne assyrienne de 701.

Quebec the Fortified City: From the 17th to the 19th Century

Quebec the Fortified City: From the 17th to the 19th Century

Royal Cities and Fortified Cities

The recovery of the Assyrian Empire from the time of confusion and hardship had begun, though slowly, as early as the end of the tenth century B.C. But Assyria's real expansion dates from the time of Assurnaṣirpal II (883–859 B.C.). He recovered Assyria's former settlements in the land Na'iri, which had been seized by the Aramaeans in the days of his predecessors, and founded new colonies in North Syria. Likewise, his son Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.) restored the old Assyrian bases on the Euphrates and added to the colonies that he had built in the same region, designating them as his “royal cities”.Yet the rising power of Assyria and its expansionist policy did not go unchallenged. The people whom the Neo-Assyrian kings attempted to subdue mustered their considerable strength to fight against the destructive might of the Assyrian army, and their strongly fortified cities were among the major sources of their power of resistance, as we are told in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. Kaprabi in the land of Bit-Adini, for example, is described as a well fortified city that had “hovered like a cloud in the sky”, while Pitura on the Tigris was, “exceedingly difficult; it was surrounded by two walls; its citadel had the form of mountain peak”. All these strong cities are designated as āl dannūti, “fortified city”, in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. When the ruler of a city is known, the city is designated as “his fortified city”, while a city of tribal people, whose country is only loosely organized, is usually called “their fortified city”, whether the name of the ruler of the city or land is known or not (see Table I).

The Tunnel of Eupalinus

The archaeological details are described of a 3,400-foot tunnel planned 2,500 years ago to supply water to a fortified city. The design of the tunnel was dictated by the topography. The course of the tunnel which is marked by many inspection shafts opening to the surface, has a passage high and wide enough for a man to walk through. The conduit which is nearly 2,800 feet along has a crooked route and runs beneath three streams. The south portion of the tunnel which is in a nearly perfect state of preservation, reveals an underground conduit into the city which leaves the east side of the tunnel about 100 feet from the south entrance. Details are described of the spectacular south portion, the the sides of which are built of large blocks joined without mortar, and have a gabled roof formed of two huge blocks leaning against each other at an angle. The hewing of the tunnel and walls of the channel, the plan for the flow of water, the evidence that tunneling proceeded from both ends, and the laying out and maintaining of the direction and slope are aspects discussed in detail.

Aleksander den Stores visitkort

Aleksander den Stores visitkort