Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1978. július-december (32. évfolyam, 27-50. szám)
1978-12-21 / 49. szám
Thursday, Dec. 21. 1978. AMERIKAI MAÖYAR SZÓ Dr. Alfred Henley: THE ROMANS "We were once citizens of the same empire", my English friend remarked. He was speaking to the Hungarian curator of the Roman museum at Aquincum, on the edge of present-day Budapest. Our interpreter, Elizabeth, translated the comment. The curator gave us a startled look but then he smiled broadly. He pointed to the large map of the Roman Empire which took up an entire wall of the lobby. There the enormous span from Britannia to Pannónia, the Roman name for Hungary, stretched more than a thousand miles, less than half the empire’s length. That morning the three of us had set out for Aquincum, the ruins of an entire Roman city, once the capital of Inferior Pannónia /actually eastern Transdanubia/, dating back to 19 A.D. We arranged the night before the taxi to take us from Hotel Sport to Óbuda /old Buda/, the site of Aquincum. Out of politeness and without thinking he could accept, I asked Elizabeth to invite our driver to spend the day with us at Aquincum. He happily agreed and was intensely engrossed in whatever we saw, particularly in the Greek and Latin inscriptions on the tombstones and on jewely. The curator showed me a golden pendant inscribed in Greek. I wrote out the translation: “Let them talk as much as they like, I do not care Do love me: it will serve you well.” The taxi driver was much moved. Clearly the lady was the mistress of a Roman officer. In ancient times the Roman military was not permitted to marry and each encampment was surrounded by their “wives' and children. The curator thanked me and said that the woman's tomb was found intact with all her jewels but her name was missing from the stone. What does this pile of ruins say to us almost two thousand years later? Greek and Roman civilization have a deeper fascination for us than any other ancient society. Why? Karl Marx, who was a profound student of Greek culture, points out: “A man cannot become a child again unless he becomes childish. But does he not enjoy the artless ways of the child and must he not strive to reproduce its truth on a higher plane? Is not the character of every epoch revived perfectly true to nature in child nature? Why should the social childhood of mankind, where it had its most beautiful development, not exert an eternal charm as an age that will never return? There are ill-bred children and precocious children. Many of the ancient nations belonged to the latter class. The Greeks were normal children. The charm their art has for us does not conflict with the primitive character of the social order from which it had sprung. It is rather the product of the latter, and is rather due to the fact that the unripe social conditions under which the art arose and under which alone it could appear can never return." Apart from Italy no country in Europe has as many ruins and remembrances of its Roman past as Hungary. The reasons are evident: from the days of Augustus at the beginning of the first century A.D. when Pannónia was conquered by the Roman legions, it was a frontier against incursions by the Celts and Huns. Made secure by encampments and the Danube, it quickly became a vacation spot for wealthy Roman families, a cross-road: for all of eastern Europe and a departure area for further conquests in Dacia, now Romania, in Thrace, now Bulgaria, and into the territory of what is now Armenia. In Hungary itself there are many reminders of the widespread Roman occupation. In western Hungary /Superior Pannónia/ the two great Roman towns of Scarabantia /Sopron/and Sabaria /Szombathely/ were the junctions of the European north-south trade route and the east-west trade route used by Byzantine merchants. It is interesting that Sabaria was founded in 43 A.D. by the great Roman emperor and administrator Claudius. Most recently Claudius was maligned by a television series based on the gossip of the Roman historians Seneca, Suetonius, and Tacitus. Yet it was in Claudius’ reign that Britain and Pannónia were added to the Empire. Claudius was the first emperor to admit Gauls to the Roman Senate, to make freed slaves his advisors, to write his own speeches, to reject the worship of emperors as gods, and to enforce tolerance toward the religious practices and traditions of the Jews in Asia Minor and Northern Africa. The town center of Szombathely stands on the same site as in Roman times. The junction of two Roman roads can still be seen today in the Garden of' Ruins /Romkert/, which is a kind of open-air > museum. Here also is a beautiful Roman mosaic pavement, the original size of which was about 700 square yards. It had belonged to the basilica of St. Quirinus, built in the fourth century. If one follows the map of Aquincum itself, shown here, it will bring the visitor to all the normal life and activites of the city two milennia ago. Two hundred years after the first Roman military occupation the little settlement became a town of the highest rank, with a population of 50.000. At the beginning of the second century, when Emperor Traianus divided Pannónia into two parts, Aquincum became the capital of Inferior Pannónia. There were sent the emperor’s governors, there was their residence. The palace of Roman governors stood on today’s Hajogyar Island. The heyday of Aquincum was in the second and third centuries. Although the continual invasions of enemies in the fourth century ruined the town many times, it was reconstructed time and again. Of course one should spend a good deal of time in the modern museum itself, where memorabilia, tools and inscriptions may be seen under one roof. In this museum is the only perfectly preserved Roman water organ in the world. The wooden parts were decayed but the 52 bronze pipes were all found. The Aquincum organ is a more advanced type than those depicted on old mosaic and in written accounts. In this organ atmospheric pressure is regulated by weights rather than by water but the organ still bore the traditional name of hydraulia. The instrument has been reconstructed and can actually be played. From the tombstone he erected to his wife we learn that the name of the organist was Titus Aelius Justus. The inscription also tells us that his wife Sabina had a lovely voice, played the harp well, was liked by the people, and made him a very good wife. “Happiness to you, whoever may read these lines,” is the message of the bereaved husband of nearly two thousand years ago. “May the gods guard you, and may you cry piously, ‘Farewell, Aelia Sabina!”’ Most of Aquincum has been excavated. A military amphitheater was recently opened up at the crossing of the Becsi ut /Vienna Road/ and Nagyszombat utca, in a thickly populated district of Óbuda. It was found that a block of dwellings called the “Round House” had been built with the circular amphitheater as a foundation. Massive stone walls found in the cellars of these dwellings were actually parts of the amphitheater. The cells below the public seats, where wild animals and prisoners were kepts, were found intact. This amphitheater - with a diameter of 144 yards, one of the largest of its kind in Europe - lay in the southern part of the town, where the hills closely approach the river. In the Raktar utca, beside the Roman cemetery, are the remains of an early Christian chapel. It dates from the fourth century, when Christianity was engaged in its first struggles to take root in Hungary. A little farther north are the remains of the Roman civilian town. Former streets, and in some places the layout of shops, can be traced. The gymnasium and hypocausts, or central heating pipes, of a large public bath have been uncovered. The central heating systems of several private villas have been (cont. p. 11.) ® .
