Archaeology Odyssey

The same problem exists at Carthage: According to tradition, Carthage was founded in 814 B.C., but no Phoenician remains as early as this have been discovered.

See Ricardo Olmos, “Warriors, Wolves and Women: The Art of the Iberians,” AO 06:03.

But luck was with the canny Trimalchio. Born a slave in the Asiatic provinces, Trimalchio was brought to Rome, where he learned bookkeeping, obtained his freedom from his master Pompeius and parlayed his knack for business into millions.

From his close-cropped head—the mark of a slave or former slave—to his napkin decorated with the broad purple stripe worn by senators on their togas, Trimalchio is a veritable popinjay.

The ostentatious Trimalchio delights in all that’s artificial; even the colorful fruits he serves his guests are meant to simulate a fire burning beneath a griddle.

That ancient Athenian male viewers typically could be expected to have such a reaction is documented by Aristophanes in his play Frogs (541–8), when the god Dionysus imagines being aroused by watching another man having sex with a girl.

Several centuries after their arrival at Samarkand, the Sarmatians left a memorable impression upon the Romans, whom they battled near the Black Sea. The Romans defeated their nomadic rivals but afterward invited several thousand of them to join the Roman army. In the late second century A.D., when Marcus Aurelius needed to augment his forces to protect the northern border of the empire in Britain, he turned to the Sarmatians, 5,500 of whom were dispatched to guard against any potential attack by the Celts.

Timur Lang (meaning “Timur the Lame” in Persian) was born in 1336 south of Samarkand and later conquered much of Central Asia, northern India, Persia and Syria. He died in 1405 while marching on China.

See Rekha Morris, “Imagining Buddha,” AO 04:04.