Page 2 of 4
Page 1: The Greek City
Page 2: The Greek City (continued)
Page 3: The Roman City
Page 4: The Roman City (continued)
Part of the city wall still stands:
And their pottery production required a kiln that could have been housed in something like this:
Pottery made here traveled inland with trading parties using rivers for their travel, hence the peculiar (red and tan) pattern starting at the upstream ends of navigable rivers on the map in the picture below. This fine pottery was no doubt traded for metal objects, cloth, and foodstuffs like barley, wheat, beans and lentils.
I was surprised to find out that there was a money economy. Greeks used money as a means of exchange, but as soon as the Romans arrived, coins were being minted in Empuries for them as well as for the native Iberian community.
Making coins and small to medium sized metal implements required a metal-working facility. One was found in the parking lot for the modern open air museum the city has become:
The native Iberian communities referred to in the photo above were also aware of and experienced with metals and how they were worked. Iberian swords were a great hit with both Carthaginians and Romans, they were hyped to be superior to all other swords of the time, but some archaeologists poo-pooh that and say they were not superior to Etruscan swords. Hey smart-guys, that is interesting historically but it doesn't matter to the reality on the ground in Iberia when the Romans arrived. When the salesman created a perception in the mind of the Roman military buyer, he was creating a new reality where it counted, and money and goods changed hands!
Speaking of the native Iberian community, there was an exhibit of grave goods, fine pottery mostly, from that community showing the symbolically curled up sword of a warrior, carved into a stone that was buried with the urn with the warrior's ashes. The site of the grave was near Ullastret, which will be visited in its own page (also connected to the Spain 2004 page).
Getting back to the city, one of its square corner towers is partly preserved:
The museum was a treasurehouse of information regarding technology in this area. These farm implements are impressive, as are the many examples of fine art in terms of jewelry and statuary (not pictured here).
Why are there needles among farm implements? Several reasons, but one prominent one was to sew shut the bags of grains and dreid legume products that were exported through the Greeks in exchange for goods the Greeks either made or brought in on ships.
I did not see this, nor could I have tranlated it, but one house among the many here shown apparently has a floor mosaic (already covered up for protection against winter when we were here) with an inscription that said: "how sweet ist is to be reclined." The official Empuries guidebook to the archeaological museum of Catalonia says it means there was a place in this home for symposia.
Symposia are not then what they are now (in my experience). Then it was the time in the evening when a man would invite friends and men he was trying to impress, would send his non-slave women to hide in their part of the house, the womens' quarters, and the men would recline on couches and be wined and fed and entertained by talented slaves, male and female.
Beginning with the host, each man would be expected to propose a toast to which everyone else would drink heartily, and after being rather full with food and wine entertainments would begin, music and dance and juggling, etc. Then sex.
Sex with a slave was an accepted and expected part of an evening's pleasure at a symposium. This practice becomes an important part of my story.
The trees in the photo above are part of a park that separates the Greek town from the Roman town. We'll visit the Roman town on the next page.
The next photo shows a mystery. This newer wall was thought to be very old at one time. Why? Because it was made, during the threat from the Carthaginians, from the much older city wall set to the interior of this one. So the stone at the bottom matched that of the remains of a wall dated to many hundreds of years before.
To protect against Carthage, the wall was moved out and raised, and the expansion allowed the Greeks and their nearest Iberian neighbors to now live together within the same walls! This is important since originally the walls were to protect the Greek city from the natives.
Natives were at first allowed into the city only in small numbers, by invitation, only to trade, and generally only in the daytime. By the time of the Carthaginian threat, however, the two peoples had become firm allies and friends. Economic and defensive interdependence cause that fusion, but it was not a complete cultural fusion.
Greek pottery is found in every Iberian grave after some time, and Iberian gods and goddesses were renamed using names from the Greek pantheon after some time, but the deliberate erasing of cultural lines was never important until it became policy under Roman rule. Was it accomplished? Some very prominent Iberians and Celtiberians became prominent Romans and helped shape Rome a century or so after the pacification of the Iberian peninsula. So there was an eventual cultural homogenization, but not always in the direction originally intended by Rome.
Go to the first page on the Roman town at Empuries.
Go to the second page on the Roman town at Empuries.
Go back to the first page on the Greek town at Empuries.
Go
Go