Carthage, El Jem, Sabratha and Leptis Magna
What a time we had! Our first reactions are given in the story we sent to the local Scottish Borders press on 5 October and repeated below. The forthcoming 'do' at the Gala Night on 6 November should bring it all together. What an experience!
"Join The Trimontium Garrison and See the Ancient World"
- or -
"To The Shores of Tripoli"
"We ought to do something more exciting," said Dr John Reid, Chairman of the Trimontium Trust. "Well, you organise it" was the challenging response. The result was a ten-day tailor-made tour by a travel company of selected Roman and Greek sites in Tunisia and Libya in the second half of September by a twelve-strong Scots group from the Trust (7 men and 5 women) to whom were added an English couple and an Irishman. (It sounds like the start of a joke - and there was certainly a lot of humour about). Good hotels, food and transport, bumpy roads, early starts, long journeys, sunshine.
Up to now the Trust has had, for the past fifteen years, an annual one-day outing to sites in Scotland or N England. Going abroad was a giant leap forward. It shows what can be done with determined leadership and a group of keen members.
The trip itself was a cultural and learning experience in two Islamic countries in the last week of Ramadan, a month of fasting in the daytime (which did not apply to tourists). Coming from Scotland, home of temporary camps and hidden forts, the group were goggle-eyed at the profusion of sites and material relics of the past, partly excavated and re-built, partly still lying about in piles of carved and decorated stones, waiting to be re-placed, partly sitting totally neglected in their carved marble splendour on the seashore.. Any one of them would have been centrepiece in the Trimontium Museum.
You thought Carthage had been razed and sown with salt? It's still there, Antonine Baths and all, and further off, seemingly rising from the desert is the towering amphitheatre of El Jem (new spelling), the third biggest in the Empire after the Colosseum and Capua (now gone). The Roman army route was followed South to the edge of the Sahara and
the salt lakes. After native villages, underground houses with offers of bread to dip in olive oil, markets (souks and medinas), fortified mosques and camel rides (you need long arms to hold the reins round the hump) and an inordinate delay by the Tunisians at the frontier, it was into Libya, with the base in traffic-mad-and-scary Tripoli (the three towns place, originally) and the seaside site of Sabratha (wonderful theatre and temple ruins) the underground frescoes at the tombs of Zanzur and the climax of the vast city of Leptis Magna itself, birthplace of the Emperor Septimius Severus, who spent a fortune in turning his home town into one of the most splendid cities of the Roman Empire. The high-walled, towering ruins of public building upon public building, uncovered from the sand of centuries are, to put it crudely, totally gobsmacking. Photos galore were taken (and will appear here soon) but even the best of images cannot recapture the moment when, from the crest of the slope, the Emperor's huge four-way arch suddenly comes into view straight ahead, with the paved Roman road passing under it, going on and on into the distance and, yes, reaching yet another arch on the horizon. The scale of it all - basilicas, baths, temples, fora, senate houses, markets, water-supply buildings, amphitheatre, theatre and long chariot-racing circus - is overwhelming. Max Boyce was right - the experience of actually being there is everything.
For most of the party Leptis was the pinnacle, but three hardy souls extended the trip by three days to fly across the huge bay to the East cape of Libya to take in the earlier and splendid Greek remains at Cyrene, Apollonia and Ptolemais and meet more expert and friendly local characters.
In retrospect the travellers can't quite believe they did it. "It
started off as a proposed outing" laughed Cathy Edmondson of Hawick, who had made her own fabric helmet, with the Trimontium logo, and knitted a Roman senator for each member of the party. Time was made, too, for a vote of thanks speech at the Leptis picnic and a Trustees meeting at Terminal 5 (it was a working opportunity, remember.)
When Dr Reid presented his report and a selection of the unmissable images at the Open Gala Night, with refreshments, in Melrose Parish Church Hall on Thursday 6 November at 7.30pm, they knew it had been real, all right. In 2009 Germany is commemorating the loss of Varus and his three legions in the Teutoburg Forest. That 'exciting' ploy will be reported on 29 October, 2009.