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Excavation and Fieldwork amongst the Garamantes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

C. M. Daniels*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Extract

The Garamantes exercised a powerful hold upon the Mediterranean imagination during the early and high Empire (Daniels 1970; Desanges 1962; Merighi 1940; Romanelli 1959; Ruprechtsburger, forthcoming). Remote and beyond the southern limits of the African provinces, they represented the mythical south, only accessible after perilous desert travel; they were inextricably interwoven in people's minds with swarming serpents, fabulous fountains and precious stones, with the silent noon tide of the terrifying desert and such inhuman creatures as men with no voices or no heads, strapfoots, Goat-Pans and Satyrs (Pliny, N.H. 5.1.7).

The reality of Roman contact with them was no less exotic. The last entry of all in the Fasti Triumphales (CIL I2, p. 50) on the Arch of Augustus in the Roman Forum commemorates a triumph celebrated on 27th March 734 A.V.C. (19 BC) by L. Cornelius Balbus, ex Africa: below, the stone surface remains rough and no further names follow. But Balbus' honour was much more noteworthy for he was not even a Roman by birth (PIR2 C1331; Thomasson 1960, 11). Like his famous uncle, Caesar's Balbus, he was a full-blooded Spaniard hailing from Cadiz (Gades) — and the only foreigner ever to be accorded a triumph, the Elder Pliny informs us (N.H. 5.5.36). His rise to fame came about through a steadfast devotion to Caesar's cause, for which he was ultimately rewarded by Augustus with consular rank (Velleius 2.51.3), and became Proconsul of Africa in ?20 BC (Syme 1939, 80, 235, 325, 339, 367).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1989

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