A Reading Lamp
Peter Kruschwitz (Reading)
A Reading Lamp
The Lamp
Our Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology owns an inscribed Roman terracotta lamp
that comes with the inventory number 79.1.14. To the best of my knowledge, it is still
unpublished. There are several problems with its history, as neither its discovery nor
its way into the Ure collection seem to have been recorded and documented
satisfactorily.
•
•
•
The piece, as the inventory number indicates, was first catalogued in 1979, but
this does not carry any meaning as regards its actual discovery.
The hand-written museum catalogue, composed by Annie Ure, merely states
for this entry: ‘[l]amps, not previously inventoried. Some from Barry
collection.’ The Barry collection, however, is a collection of Cypriote
ceramics, and it is very unlikely that the above lamp ever formed part of this.
The museum’s online database gives ‘Ratisbon’, i. e. the German (Bavarian)
city of Regensburg, as the lamp’s provenance, yet the fabric is said to be
‘North Italian’, dating it ‘150 AD’.
In short: all of this may be guesswork, pure and simple, easily based on information
available for similar pieces that were found. On the other hand, it may be that
somebody knew something about this lamp and committed it to our records, without
leaving any actual documentation. As things stand, I have yet to find in the museum
archive the corroborating evidence for any of these claims.
What I do know for certain about this object, however, is what we all can see with our
bare eyes:
This is a orange-to-reddish terracotta lamp. It is of simple design and of Roman
origin. The lamp is made of mould-made pottery, and in its style it conforms to the
common Loeschcke type XK of Roman clay lamps. It has a circular, bowl-shaped
body, a rounded shoulder, a small flat discus on the top, lacking any decoration, with
a raised rim and a nozzle which is connected to the discus with a channel. There are
three lugs on the lamp’s shoulder, none of which is pierced (which implies that these
served merely decorative purposes).
The nozzle originally received a wick, to draw the fuel from the vessel’s body, and
traces of soot at the nozzle prove that this lamp was indeed in use. A hole in the
discus exists to receive the fuel – typically oil, but a raunchy scene in Petronius’
Satyrica for example suggests that other substances were used as well, e. g. to spread
certain scents:
hinc ex eodem unguento in uinarium atque lucernam aliquantum est infusum.
(Petr. sat. 70.9)
Another, rather smaller drill-hole exists in our lamp, situated closer to the nozzle.
Presumably it was supposed to support the flow of oxygen. That smaller hole,
however, is blocked solid, and I have reason to believe that this blockage is in fact not
an actual blockage, but a production flaw of this lamp.
An element that mystifies me are two parallel, reasonably deep scratches in the
surface of the discus – I hope someone will eventually be able to fill me in about
those.
Finally, our lamp stands on a multiple rings on its base, within which there is an
inscription that gives the name VIBIANI in relief – and this is in fact how I first
encountered it, as this is how it is on display in the Ure Museum, in a case that
illustrates writing and literacy.
Some Musings
At first glance, there appears to be absolutely nothing special about this lamp: it is an
everyday object, functionally designed to provide light during the hours of darkness,
without any noteworthy decoration. The Roman polymath and satirist Varro is right
on the money when he, in one of his Menippean satires, dwells on the mere
functionality of lamps, of the lucerna, as the Romans called this object – quite
obviously an utterly unspectacular item, mostly just designed for practical use:
lecto strato matellam, lucernam, ceteras res esui usuique
prae se portant.
(Varro, Menippeae 262)
Can such a seemingly insignificant everyday object can yield a host of fascinating
insights into the ancient world, the needs, desires, and concerns of its people? Would
one find lightbulbs of present times in the museums of the future? Will future
historians try and interpret our realities on the basis of those objects? Hard to tell. But
what we can try to do today is this: we can consider a number of aspects related to
this object, and to similar objects, and see what emerges. Here is what I propose to do:
i) I would like to begin with a few words exploring the connotations of lamps in Latin
literature, largely based on literary texts from the Roman empire;
ii) I would like to offer a rough-and-ready analysis of the object itself, based on its
inscription, and explore what this could mean to an Ancient Historian; and finally,
iii) I would like to share with you, as an end point to my presentation today, what I
consider to be one of the finest texts ever written about lamps in the ancient world,
and I will offer you a challenging interpretation of said text.
The Literary Lamp
Let me now begin with a few observations on lamps mentioned in literature, Roman
literature in particular, to provide a cultural backdrop for the object that I have just
introduced to you.
We are used to inhabiting a world that is full of light, both natural and artificial.
Complete and utter darkness is a rare experience nowadays, and a powerful one to
encounter, as some, if not all, of you will know. It is almost as precious as complete
silence – a powerful and overwhelming thing to encounter. Moreover, the
illumination of the world we inhabit is largely provided by means that do not directly
expose us to the smell of fuel and open fire – it is a safe, almost sterile world, remote
from an encounter with the natural and spiritual. With that, our world is
fundamentally different from that of the peoples and cultures we study in Classics, a
world that may well have understood certain basic principles of electricity, but did not
exploit it for the same purposes that we do today. We must bear that in mind, before
we approach the ancient evidence – let us visualise a world where night essentially
means darkness, unless open fire – in a hearth, a torch, a candle, or a lamp – provided
light (and warmth), both inside and outside one’s home.
This almost immediately makes one thing abundantly clear: lamps, light provided by
lamps, are a fundamentally sensual experience, inextricably linked to themes such as
home, intimacy, even sexuality. This is a theme that clearly emerges already in Greek
poetry – lamps are personified witnesses of love affairs, for example in Greek
Hellenistic epigram. Similar things happen in Roman love poetry, and they happen
with significant frequency. The following passage is one of my favourite examples, a
passage from Ovid, making the lamp a focal point of sa ensual experience, yet with
great ambivalence:
Illic saepe animos iuuenum rapuere puellae,
Et Venus in uinis ignis in igne fuit.
Hic tu fallaci nimium ne crede lucernae:
Iudicio formae noxque merumque nocent.
245
(Ov. ars 1.243–246)
Wine, alcohol, is the fuel, the lubricant – but the sensual experience of the very flame
provides the passion, the fire in the fire, as Ovid puts it – yet strangely enough the
light does not seem to be making anyone seeing anything clearer: the view is being
described as blurred, distorting one’s judgement just as much as wine would do: the
lamp is a treacherous agent, and the lamp must not be trusted.
The sensual, erotic connotations are not particularly surprising, and you may well
know that many ancient lamps display highly erotic, or in fact downright
pornographic scenes as part of their decoration, thus adding to the tension of the
experience in real life, beyond the artifice of romantic poetry.
But what about the idea that an object whose sole purpose it is to support one’s ability
to see things during the hours of darkness actually distorts one’s view, and adversely
affects one’s ability to make clear judgements? Interestingly enough, Ovid is not the
only Roman author to comment on that. Petronius, in his Satyrica, comments on the
impact of illumination and inebriation to one’s perception:
et sane iam lucernae mihi plures uidebantur ardere totumque triclinium esse
mutatum
(Petr. sat. 64.2)
How has the room changed, one may ask? Petronius does not tell us, but the way in
which lamps managed to change one’s perception – whether in a blurring or rather in
a more contrastive manner entirely depends on an author’s narrative purposes – is
described by Varro in his work on the Latin language. In a passage which is to give an
explanation as to why the nominative of Latin nouns is not always a good indicator of
its inflection, Varro adduces the following simile:
qui errant, quod non ab eo obliquis casibus fit, ut recti simili facie
ostendantur, sed propter eos facilius perspici similitudo potest eorum quam
uim habea[n]t, ut lucerna in tenebris allata non facit quae ibi sunt posita
similia sint, sed ut uideantur, quae sunt quoius di[s] sint.
(Varro, ling. 9.43)
Just as a lamp in the dark would provide a contrast-enhancing, yet distorting grazing
light, a sidelight, that increases the levels of nuances between prominent and less
prominent features, Varro argues, inflected forms of Latin nouns bring out the actual
differences between them in their potentially homogeneous nominatives.
The amount of passages that describe the ways in which the light of lamps impacts on
one’s perception could be multiplied with significant ease, including for example a
reference to Lucretius’ fourth book, in which he describes how a combination of
staring at a flame and exercising pressure on one’s eyeballs results in the most
remarkable visual effects (Lucr. 4.447 ff.).
Lamps, senses, perception, eroticism, charged atmosphere – all of these are recurring
themes in the ancient Latin literary discourse involving lamps. These motives seems
to be present as well in the following passage , a passage written by the Greek
satirical writer Lucian, a passage to be read in his wonderfully entertaining work True
Histories – yet this passage has a lot more to offer still:
Sailing the next night and day we reached Lamp-town toward evening, already
being on our downward way. This city lies in the air midway between the
Pleiades and the Hyades, though much lower than the Zodiac. On landing, we
did not find any men at all, but a lot of lamps running about and loitering in
the public square and at the harbour. Some of them were small and poor, so to
speak: a few, being great and powerful, were very splendid and conspicuous.
Each of them has his own house, or sconce, they have names like men, and we
heard them talking. They offered us no harm, but invited us to be their guests.
We were afraid, however, and none of us ventured to eat a mouthful or close
an eye. They have a public building in the centre of the city, where their
magistrate sits all night and calls each of them by name, and whoever does not
answer is sentenced to death for deserting. They are executed by being put out.
We were at court, saw what went on, and heard the lamps defend themselves
and tell why they came late. There I recognised our own lamp: I spoke to him
and enquired how things were at home, and he told me all about them
(Lucian, True Histories 1.29, transl. A. M. Harmon)
Here Lucian visits a place called Lamp-town, Lychnopolis in the original Greek.
Earlier interpretors have offered readings according to which the lamps arguably
symbolise human souls – a craftsmanlike exegesis of a fantastic passage: lights,
burning, yet in the danger of being put out, in the skies – surely those have to stand
for human souls? But do they really? A more recent approach has offered a rather
different perspective. The next sight on Lucian’s whistle-stop tour from the sky to the
Ocean is Cloudcuckootown, a reference to Aristophanes no less – an escapist’s vision
of a bizarrely detached ideal polis, yet as a polis gone wrong.
Lychnopolis has gone wrong, too – we see an almost totalitarian regime exercising
control and surveillance, and we see the narrator scared, afraid to close an eye as it
were, as well as the lamps themselves being full of potentially threatening knowledge.
One may think of the lamps as a metaphor for household slaves (as someone recently
proposed) – but what makes this passage so striking and powerful is its use of the
lamp as all-knowing conspirators: these lamps (very much like slaves, of course) may
have seen things – things of the sort that Ovid has been imagining in the passage that I
introduced earlier. I wish we could ask our lamp in the Ure Museum a bit, and find
out what it witnessed during its lifetime.
The Lamp as an Object
Another, fascinating aspect about the passage from Lucian is the indication of the
sheer spectrum of lamps that existed, from the simple and unsophisticated to the
lavish and ornate. Also, it highlights lamps as mass-produced goods, cheap and
readily available to those who need a simple solution, and those who need this
quickly. And on that notion I will now move on to my second major point today,
moving away from the lucerna as literary imaginations, closer to the reality of this
object as an object, as merchandise, and as a valuable object for historical research –
if only we had a rather better documentation for own item, I hasten to add.
Roman terracotta lamps have been researched abundantly over the last couple of
decades, and there is no point in attempting a new interpretation here, based on a
single piece, even more so as this piece of evidence blends in so nicely with the
remainder of evidence. Lamps such as ours were indeed produced en masse – chances
are that, when you go to any other collection of antiquities, you will not only discover
lamps that are a bit like ours, but in fact lamps that are precisely like ours. How do we
know? Well, we do know not only from the very shape of the object, but rather more
precisely from its inscription – VIBIANI, a household name on the Roman lamp
market of the 2nd century A. D.
The name, in the possessive genitive, moulded rather than scratched, does not indicate
the owner, but the producer, and, interestingly enough, this Vibianus can, from the
multitude of relevant findings be identified as a businessman, namely the owner of
one of most successful lamp-producing businesses in the Roman empire. His massproduced lamps, as well as similar types of competitor businesses, are commonly
referred to with a German term, even in English publications, Firmalampen, factory
lamps, i. e. lamps produced by proto-industrial factories and workshops for a mass
market.
We have only very little knowledge of who this Vibianus was whose name is on all
those very many lamps that were found across the empire, including Britain (e. g. in
Colchester). What we do seem to know is that he started his business in the second
century A. D., during the Hadrianic-Antonine period, originally presumably in
Northern Italy, and that his business expanded rapidly, with branch offices on the
market at the Danube, perhaps pushing competitors, such as Fortis and Cresces out of
their businesses by the end of the 2nd century A. D.
Considering the huge amount of lamps that were discovered with Vibianus’ name on
it, clearly from different workshops, sometimes from rather different parts of the
empire, and sometimes with misspelled versions of the name, it cannot surprise that
there has been a lot of discussion going on about the question: was Vibianus’
trademark so successful that others were producing unauthorised versions of the same
product, to cash in on the successful brand established by Vibianus? This may well be
the case, but William Harris has – and I believe convincingly – shown that a more
likely explanation in most cases is in fact the existence of branch offices across the
empire. (Which raises some interesting questions as regards the relevance of, and the
financial viability of, long-distance trade for relatively inexpensive goods such as
lamps – it is obviously more expedient to run a branch office than to have these
objects shipped from overseas.)
The very presence of the name Vibianus on these lamps, on our lamp, requires a short
word as well. One may of course see it as a trademark, as a seal guaranteeing a certain
quality, a certain standard – just as we would have on, say, fine china. And in fact, we
do have evidence for such: a great amount of lamps have been discovered, again all
over the Roman empire, that come with forms of the following type of inscription:
Emite lucernas colatas ab Asse [or: de officina Asseni]
‘Buy fine lamps from (…).
Here, however, we typically find this inscription – and advertisement – on the surface
of the lamp that is visible when the lamp is operational, not at the bottom, where you
would ruin your toga from the fuel upon turning it over to inspect it.
I am not ruling out that the VIBIANI inscription served a certain trademark-type
function. A rather more plausible explanation, however, is to see it as an inscription
that serves a rather more unspectacular need: the need to identify one’s lot in a kiln
that produces lamps for more than workshop (a common phenomenon for example in
the case of Samian ware), and the need to organise the logistics of commerce when
feeding these lamps into the market.
The Lamp as a Symbol: A Fable
I would like to conclude my lecture with an emphatic step back away again from the
cruelties of the to Roman literature, and will now introduce you to a text that, I think,
has been under-appreciated and in fact been dismissed for far too long, as a result of
influential thinkers’ disapproval of its qualities – thinkers that include such big names
as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
One of the most intriguing, elusive authors of Roman antiquity is the fabulist
Phaedrus. He lived and wrote his poems, based on the fables of the Greek story teller
Aesop, during the first half of the first century A. D., making him a contemporary of
the Julio-Claudian dynasty – yet a contemporary who remarkably frequently gets
neglected. The poet introduces his poetic I in book three of his collection of fables,
where he claims to be born on Mt Pieros in Katerini, Greece, or Ancient Macedon, to
be more precise. This is questionable, to say the least, for the Pierian spring obviously
is the very spring that was sacred to the Muses, rendering this place rather appropriate
a birthplace for any respectable self-professed poet of some standing – as he himself
points out on one occasion. What this author is best known for nowadays, is his
rendering of the Aesopic fables from Greek prose into Latin verse, iambic senarii to
be precise, with added material of his own design
The eleventh poem of the fourth book of Phaedrus is called Fur et lucerna, ‘The Thief
and the Lamp’, and I would like to introduce this poem to you now:
Lucernam fur accendit ex ara Iouis
Ipsumque compilauit ad lumen suum.
Onustus qui sacrilegio cum discederet,
Repente uocem sancta misit Religio:
‘Malorum quamuis ista fuerint munera
5
Mihique inuisa, ut non offendar surripi,
Tamen, sceleste, spiritu culpam lues,
Olim cum ascriptus uenerit poenae dies.
Sed ne ignis noster facinori praeluceat,
Per quem uerendos excolit pietas deos,
10
Veto esse tale luminis commercium’.
Itaque hodie nec lucernam de flamma deum
Nec de lucerna fas est accendi sacrum.
Quot res contineat hoc argumentum utiles,
Non explicabit alius quam qui repperit.
15
Significat primo saepe quos ipse alueris,
Tibi inueniri maxime contrarios;
Secundum ostendit scelera non ira deum,
Fatorum dicto sed puniri tempore;
Nouissime interdicit ne cum malefico
20
Vsum bonus consociet ullius rei.
‘A thief lighted his lamp at the altar of Jupiter, and then plundered it by the
help of its own light. Just as he was taking his departure, laden with the results
of his sacrilege, the Holy Place suddenly sent forth these words: ‘Although
these were the gifts of the wicked, and to me abominable, so much so that I
care not to be spoiled of them, still, profane man, thou shalt pay the penalty
with thy life, when hereafter, the day of punishment, appointed by fate,
arrives. But, that our fire, by means of which piety worships the awful Gods,
may not afford its light to crime, I forbid that henceforth there shall be any
such interchange of light.’ Accordingly, to this day, it is neither lawful for a
lamp to be lighted at the fire of the Gods, nor yet a sacrifice kindled from a
lamp.
‘No other than he who invented this Fable, could explain how many useful
lessons it affords. In the first place, it teaches that those whom you yourself
have brought up, may often be found the most hostile to you: then again, it
shows that crimes are punished not through the wrath of the Gods, but at the
time appointed by the Fates: lastly, it warns the good to use nothing in
common with the wicked.’
(transl. Smart)
What scholars and thinkers alike felt hard to come to terms with here, is the absence
of a personification – no foxes, no hares, no nothing: Lessing dismissed it as one of
the worst fables ever, especially as the poet himself had to add an explanation to it.
But should we be silly enough to fall for the trap laid out by a poet? By a poet, I
would like to add, who explains in the preface of his third book of fables that fables
were invented by slaves who, being prevented from speaking openly, had to
camouflage their messages? Slaves who, as Phaedrus puts it, would conceal their
attitude in similes, as to criticise the deplorable state of the world in made-up
imagery? Why would we want to believe him when he says that he offers us an
explanation of his own fable then?
Certainly, the poet seems to provide us with an aition, a myth-history of why one
must not desecrate sacred fire by lighting profane lamps on them, and that one must
not light sacred fires by using such worldly objects. Certainly, we may take away the
lesson that an offering – such as sacred fire – could be abused when taken away with
a lamp, then be held against the original provider of illumination. Certainly, we can be
amazed by this seemingly almost proto-Christian idea of a judgement day (rather than
immediate divine wrath). But is this what this poem is about? Certainly, we can be
amused by the idea that a deity would have a depressingly realistic view of the value
of tokens of sacrifice and of the motives of those who gave them – taking little
interest in them at all.
Let us consider, for just a moment there, what is happening here. The poem starts
with a reference to the object of my talk today, a lucerna – it is the first word,
followed by a reference to the perpetrator, the fur. The divine voice, sancta religio,
does not appear to mind the theft of meaningless trinkets – eventual passing away will
be enough of a punishment for that (which is a much more plausible reading of these
lines than the assumption that there is a proto-Christian notion of a judgement day, as
proposed by some scholars). But what really upsets the sancta religio is something
else, or in fact, the theft of something else: it is theft of the very fire itself, from the
sacred altar of Jupiter, to light the lucerna (regardless of what the lucerna gets used
subsequently).
The motive of ‘theft of fire’ is a common one, often utilised as a civilisatory narrative:
we find it in the Rig Veda, we find it in the myth of Prometheus. We find it in the
Christian bible, in the book of Enoch, we find it in civilisation outside the IndoEuropean sphere, including the Far East and the Americas. But this story, as told by
Phaedrus, is different: this is not fire used for the benefit of humankind, it is fire used
for personal benefit, and snatched away from its sacred origins with a depressing
everyday object.
What if this is what Phaedrus meant to tell us, then? What if an act, that can be seen
as quintessential for enlightenment, civilisation, liberation from dependence of
superstitions, gets corrupted, embodied in a depressing narrative of someone who
starts as Prometheus, but ends up to be a petty thief? A pretty bold reading, you may
say. But let us look just once again at the final interpretation that Phaedrus offers:
‘lastly, it warns the good to use nothing in common with the wicked’.
I wanted to end on this note, because I think it lends itself as a powerful image for
Higher Education and our Museum, a temple of the Muses. The enlightenment,
civilisation, liberation from dependence of superstitions that we have to offer is called
a University education, and all too often we see petty thieves with their little lamps –
whether they debate the value of Arts and Humanities subjects (as opposed to the
Sciences), whether they stress the usefulness of vocational degrees, or whether they
invoke the almighty idea of employability – we see petty thieves coming and trying to
snatch away something from that eternal flame of civilisation and humanity. We must
defend it, at any cost, in the interest of the good, and we must not use anything in
common with the wicked. Today, with the fantastic addition of objects to our Ure
collection, we have indeed taken another important step, and I am grateful to all of
you who have made this possible.
A Reading Lamp
The Lamp
Our Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology owns an inscribed Roman terracotta lamp
that comes with the inventory number 79.1.14. To the best of my knowledge, it is still
unpublished. There are several problems with its history, as neither its discovery nor
its way into the Ure collection seem to have been recorded and documented
satisfactorily.
•
•
•
The piece, as the inventory number indicates, was first catalogued in 1979, but
this does not carry any meaning as regards its actual discovery.
The hand-written museum catalogue, composed by Annie Ure, merely states
for this entry: ‘[l]amps, not previously inventoried. Some from Barry
collection.’ The Barry collection, however, is a collection of Cypriote
ceramics, and it is very unlikely that the above lamp ever formed part of this.
The museum’s online database gives ‘Ratisbon’, i. e. the German (Bavarian)
city of Regensburg, as the lamp’s provenance, yet the fabric is said to be
‘North Italian’, dating it ‘150 AD’.
In short: all of this may be guesswork, pure and simple, easily based on information
available for similar pieces that were found. On the other hand, it may be that
somebody knew something about this lamp and committed it to our records, without
leaving any actual documentation. As things stand, I have yet to find in the museum
archive the corroborating evidence for any of these claims.
What I do know for certain about this object, however, is what we all can see with our
bare eyes:
This is a orange-to-reddish terracotta lamp. It is of simple design and of Roman
origin. The lamp is made of mould-made pottery, and in its style it conforms to the
common Loeschcke type XK of Roman clay lamps. It has a circular, bowl-shaped
body, a rounded shoulder, a small flat discus on the top, lacking any decoration, with
a raised rim and a nozzle which is connected to the discus with a channel. There are
three lugs on the lamp’s shoulder, none of which is pierced (which implies that these
served merely decorative purposes).
The nozzle originally received a wick, to draw the fuel from the vessel’s body, and
traces of soot at the nozzle prove that this lamp was indeed in use. A hole in the
discus exists to receive the fuel – typically oil, but a raunchy scene in Petronius’
Satyrica for example suggests that other substances were used as well, e. g. to spread
certain scents:
hinc ex eodem unguento in uinarium atque lucernam aliquantum est infusum.
(Petr. sat. 70.9)
Another, rather smaller drill-hole exists in our lamp, situated closer to the nozzle.
Presumably it was supposed to support the flow of oxygen. That smaller hole,
however, is blocked solid, and I have reason to believe that this blockage is in fact not
an actual blockage, but a production flaw of this lamp.
An element that mystifies me are two parallel, reasonably deep scratches in the
surface of the discus – I hope someone will eventually be able to fill me in about
those.
Finally, our lamp stands on a multiple rings on its base, within which there is an
inscription that gives the name VIBIANI in relief – and this is in fact how I first
encountered it, as this is how it is on display in the Ure Museum, in a case that
illustrates writing and literacy.
Some Musings
At first glance, there appears to be absolutely nothing special about this lamp: it is an
everyday object, functionally designed to provide light during the hours of darkness,
without any noteworthy decoration. The Roman polymath and satirist Varro is right
on the money when he, in one of his Menippean satires, dwells on the mere
functionality of lamps, of the lucerna, as the Romans called this object – quite
obviously an utterly unspectacular item, mostly just designed for practical use:
lecto strato matellam, lucernam, ceteras res esui usuique
prae se portant.
(Varro, Menippeae 262)
Can such a seemingly insignificant everyday object can yield a host of fascinating
insights into the ancient world, the needs, desires, and concerns of its people? Would
one find lightbulbs of present times in the museums of the future? Will future
historians try and interpret our realities on the basis of those objects? Hard to tell. But
what we can try to do today is this: we can consider a number of aspects related to
this object, and to similar objects, and see what emerges. Here is what I propose to do:
i) I would like to begin with a few words exploring the connotations of lamps in Latin
literature, largely based on literary texts from the Roman empire;
ii) I would like to offer a rough-and-ready analysis of the object itself, based on its
inscription, and explore what this could mean to an Ancient Historian; and finally,
iii) I would like to share with you, as an end point to my presentation today, what I
consider to be one of the finest texts ever written about lamps in the ancient world,
and I will offer you a challenging interpretation of said text.
The Literary Lamp
Let me now begin with a few observations on lamps mentioned in literature, Roman
literature in particular, to provide a cultural backdrop for the object that I have just
introduced to you.
We are used to inhabiting a world that is full of light, both natural and artificial.
Complete and utter darkness is a rare experience nowadays, and a powerful one to
encounter, as some, if not all, of you will know. It is almost as precious as complete
silence – a powerful and overwhelming thing to encounter. Moreover, the
illumination of the world we inhabit is largely provided by means that do not directly
expose us to the smell of fuel and open fire – it is a safe, almost sterile world, remote
from an encounter with the natural and spiritual. With that, our world is
fundamentally different from that of the peoples and cultures we study in Classics, a
world that may well have understood certain basic principles of electricity, but did not
exploit it for the same purposes that we do today. We must bear that in mind, before
we approach the ancient evidence – let us visualise a world where night essentially
means darkness, unless open fire – in a hearth, a torch, a candle, or a lamp – provided
light (and warmth), both inside and outside one’s home.
This almost immediately makes one thing abundantly clear: lamps, light provided by
lamps, are a fundamentally sensual experience, inextricably linked to themes such as
home, intimacy, even sexuality. This is a theme that clearly emerges already in Greek
poetry – lamps are personified witnesses of love affairs, for example in Greek
Hellenistic epigram. Similar things happen in Roman love poetry, and they happen
with significant frequency. The following passage is one of my favourite examples, a
passage from Ovid, making the lamp a focal point of sa ensual experience, yet with
great ambivalence:
Illic saepe animos iuuenum rapuere puellae,
Et Venus in uinis ignis in igne fuit.
Hic tu fallaci nimium ne crede lucernae:
Iudicio formae noxque merumque nocent.
245
(Ov. ars 1.243–246)
Wine, alcohol, is the fuel, the lubricant – but the sensual experience of the very flame
provides the passion, the fire in the fire, as Ovid puts it – yet strangely enough the
light does not seem to be making anyone seeing anything clearer: the view is being
described as blurred, distorting one’s judgement just as much as wine would do: the
lamp is a treacherous agent, and the lamp must not be trusted.
The sensual, erotic connotations are not particularly surprising, and you may well
know that many ancient lamps display highly erotic, or in fact downright
pornographic scenes as part of their decoration, thus adding to the tension of the
experience in real life, beyond the artifice of romantic poetry.
But what about the idea that an object whose sole purpose it is to support one’s ability
to see things during the hours of darkness actually distorts one’s view, and adversely
affects one’s ability to make clear judgements? Interestingly enough, Ovid is not the
only Roman author to comment on that. Petronius, in his Satyrica, comments on the
impact of illumination and inebriation to one’s perception:
et sane iam lucernae mihi plures uidebantur ardere totumque triclinium esse
mutatum
(Petr. sat. 64.2)
How has the room changed, one may ask? Petronius does not tell us, but the way in
which lamps managed to change one’s perception – whether in a blurring or rather in
a more contrastive manner entirely depends on an author’s narrative purposes – is
described by Varro in his work on the Latin language. In a passage which is to give an
explanation as to why the nominative of Latin nouns is not always a good indicator of
its inflection, Varro adduces the following simile:
qui errant, quod non ab eo obliquis casibus fit, ut recti simili facie
ostendantur, sed propter eos facilius perspici similitudo potest eorum quam
uim habea[n]t, ut lucerna in tenebris allata non facit quae ibi sunt posita
similia sint, sed ut uideantur, quae sunt quoius di[s] sint.
(Varro, ling. 9.43)
Just as a lamp in the dark would provide a contrast-enhancing, yet distorting grazing
light, a sidelight, that increases the levels of nuances between prominent and less
prominent features, Varro argues, inflected forms of Latin nouns bring out the actual
differences between them in their potentially homogeneous nominatives.
The amount of passages that describe the ways in which the light of lamps impacts on
one’s perception could be multiplied with significant ease, including for example a
reference to Lucretius’ fourth book, in which he describes how a combination of
staring at a flame and exercising pressure on one’s eyeballs results in the most
remarkable visual effects (Lucr. 4.447 ff.).
Lamps, senses, perception, eroticism, charged atmosphere – all of these are recurring
themes in the ancient Latin literary discourse involving lamps. These motives seems
to be present as well in the following passage , a passage written by the Greek
satirical writer Lucian, a passage to be read in his wonderfully entertaining work True
Histories – yet this passage has a lot more to offer still:
Sailing the next night and day we reached Lamp-town toward evening, already
being on our downward way. This city lies in the air midway between the
Pleiades and the Hyades, though much lower than the Zodiac. On landing, we
did not find any men at all, but a lot of lamps running about and loitering in
the public square and at the harbour. Some of them were small and poor, so to
speak: a few, being great and powerful, were very splendid and conspicuous.
Each of them has his own house, or sconce, they have names like men, and we
heard them talking. They offered us no harm, but invited us to be their guests.
We were afraid, however, and none of us ventured to eat a mouthful or close
an eye. They have a public building in the centre of the city, where their
magistrate sits all night and calls each of them by name, and whoever does not
answer is sentenced to death for deserting. They are executed by being put out.
We were at court, saw what went on, and heard the lamps defend themselves
and tell why they came late. There I recognised our own lamp: I spoke to him
and enquired how things were at home, and he told me all about them
(Lucian, True Histories 1.29, transl. A. M. Harmon)
Here Lucian visits a place called Lamp-town, Lychnopolis in the original Greek.
Earlier interpretors have offered readings according to which the lamps arguably
symbolise human souls – a craftsmanlike exegesis of a fantastic passage: lights,
burning, yet in the danger of being put out, in the skies – surely those have to stand
for human souls? But do they really? A more recent approach has offered a rather
different perspective. The next sight on Lucian’s whistle-stop tour from the sky to the
Ocean is Cloudcuckootown, a reference to Aristophanes no less – an escapist’s vision
of a bizarrely detached ideal polis, yet as a polis gone wrong.
Lychnopolis has gone wrong, too – we see an almost totalitarian regime exercising
control and surveillance, and we see the narrator scared, afraid to close an eye as it
were, as well as the lamps themselves being full of potentially threatening knowledge.
One may think of the lamps as a metaphor for household slaves (as someone recently
proposed) – but what makes this passage so striking and powerful is its use of the
lamp as all-knowing conspirators: these lamps (very much like slaves, of course) may
have seen things – things of the sort that Ovid has been imagining in the passage that I
introduced earlier. I wish we could ask our lamp in the Ure Museum a bit, and find
out what it witnessed during its lifetime.
The Lamp as an Object
Another, fascinating aspect about the passage from Lucian is the indication of the
sheer spectrum of lamps that existed, from the simple and unsophisticated to the
lavish and ornate. Also, it highlights lamps as mass-produced goods, cheap and
readily available to those who need a simple solution, and those who need this
quickly. And on that notion I will now move on to my second major point today,
moving away from the lucerna as literary imaginations, closer to the reality of this
object as an object, as merchandise, and as a valuable object for historical research –
if only we had a rather better documentation for own item, I hasten to add.
Roman terracotta lamps have been researched abundantly over the last couple of
decades, and there is no point in attempting a new interpretation here, based on a
single piece, even more so as this piece of evidence blends in so nicely with the
remainder of evidence. Lamps such as ours were indeed produced en masse – chances
are that, when you go to any other collection of antiquities, you will not only discover
lamps that are a bit like ours, but in fact lamps that are precisely like ours. How do we
know? Well, we do know not only from the very shape of the object, but rather more
precisely from its inscription – VIBIANI, a household name on the Roman lamp
market of the 2nd century A. D.
The name, in the possessive genitive, moulded rather than scratched, does not indicate
the owner, but the producer, and, interestingly enough, this Vibianus can, from the
multitude of relevant findings be identified as a businessman, namely the owner of
one of most successful lamp-producing businesses in the Roman empire. His massproduced lamps, as well as similar types of competitor businesses, are commonly
referred to with a German term, even in English publications, Firmalampen, factory
lamps, i. e. lamps produced by proto-industrial factories and workshops for a mass
market.
We have only very little knowledge of who this Vibianus was whose name is on all
those very many lamps that were found across the empire, including Britain (e. g. in
Colchester). What we do seem to know is that he started his business in the second
century A. D., during the Hadrianic-Antonine period, originally presumably in
Northern Italy, and that his business expanded rapidly, with branch offices on the
market at the Danube, perhaps pushing competitors, such as Fortis and Cresces out of
their businesses by the end of the 2nd century A. D.
Considering the huge amount of lamps that were discovered with Vibianus’ name on
it, clearly from different workshops, sometimes from rather different parts of the
empire, and sometimes with misspelled versions of the name, it cannot surprise that
there has been a lot of discussion going on about the question: was Vibianus’
trademark so successful that others were producing unauthorised versions of the same
product, to cash in on the successful brand established by Vibianus? This may well be
the case, but William Harris has – and I believe convincingly – shown that a more
likely explanation in most cases is in fact the existence of branch offices across the
empire. (Which raises some interesting questions as regards the relevance of, and the
financial viability of, long-distance trade for relatively inexpensive goods such as
lamps – it is obviously more expedient to run a branch office than to have these
objects shipped from overseas.)
The very presence of the name Vibianus on these lamps, on our lamp, requires a short
word as well. One may of course see it as a trademark, as a seal guaranteeing a certain
quality, a certain standard – just as we would have on, say, fine china. And in fact, we
do have evidence for such: a great amount of lamps have been discovered, again all
over the Roman empire, that come with forms of the following type of inscription:
Emite lucernas colatas ab Asse [or: de officina Asseni]
‘Buy fine lamps from (…).
Here, however, we typically find this inscription – and advertisement – on the surface
of the lamp that is visible when the lamp is operational, not at the bottom, where you
would ruin your toga from the fuel upon turning it over to inspect it.
I am not ruling out that the VIBIANI inscription served a certain trademark-type
function. A rather more plausible explanation, however, is to see it as an inscription
that serves a rather more unspectacular need: the need to identify one’s lot in a kiln
that produces lamps for more than workshop (a common phenomenon for example in
the case of Samian ware), and the need to organise the logistics of commerce when
feeding these lamps into the market.
The Lamp as a Symbol: A Fable
I would like to conclude my lecture with an emphatic step back away again from the
cruelties of the to Roman literature, and will now introduce you to a text that, I think,
has been under-appreciated and in fact been dismissed for far too long, as a result of
influential thinkers’ disapproval of its qualities – thinkers that include such big names
as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
One of the most intriguing, elusive authors of Roman antiquity is the fabulist
Phaedrus. He lived and wrote his poems, based on the fables of the Greek story teller
Aesop, during the first half of the first century A. D., making him a contemporary of
the Julio-Claudian dynasty – yet a contemporary who remarkably frequently gets
neglected. The poet introduces his poetic I in book three of his collection of fables,
where he claims to be born on Mt Pieros in Katerini, Greece, or Ancient Macedon, to
be more precise. This is questionable, to say the least, for the Pierian spring obviously
is the very spring that was sacred to the Muses, rendering this place rather appropriate
a birthplace for any respectable self-professed poet of some standing – as he himself
points out on one occasion. What this author is best known for nowadays, is his
rendering of the Aesopic fables from Greek prose into Latin verse, iambic senarii to
be precise, with added material of his own design
The eleventh poem of the fourth book of Phaedrus is called Fur et lucerna, ‘The Thief
and the Lamp’, and I would like to introduce this poem to you now:
Lucernam fur accendit ex ara Iouis
Ipsumque compilauit ad lumen suum.
Onustus qui sacrilegio cum discederet,
Repente uocem sancta misit Religio:
‘Malorum quamuis ista fuerint munera
5
Mihique inuisa, ut non offendar surripi,
Tamen, sceleste, spiritu culpam lues,
Olim cum ascriptus uenerit poenae dies.
Sed ne ignis noster facinori praeluceat,
Per quem uerendos excolit pietas deos,
10
Veto esse tale luminis commercium’.
Itaque hodie nec lucernam de flamma deum
Nec de lucerna fas est accendi sacrum.
Quot res contineat hoc argumentum utiles,
Non explicabit alius quam qui repperit.
15
Significat primo saepe quos ipse alueris,
Tibi inueniri maxime contrarios;
Secundum ostendit scelera non ira deum,
Fatorum dicto sed puniri tempore;
Nouissime interdicit ne cum malefico
20
Vsum bonus consociet ullius rei.
‘A thief lighted his lamp at the altar of Jupiter, and then plundered it by the
help of its own light. Just as he was taking his departure, laden with the results
of his sacrilege, the Holy Place suddenly sent forth these words: ‘Although
these were the gifts of the wicked, and to me abominable, so much so that I
care not to be spoiled of them, still, profane man, thou shalt pay the penalty
with thy life, when hereafter, the day of punishment, appointed by fate,
arrives. But, that our fire, by means of which piety worships the awful Gods,
may not afford its light to crime, I forbid that henceforth there shall be any
such interchange of light.’ Accordingly, to this day, it is neither lawful for a
lamp to be lighted at the fire of the Gods, nor yet a sacrifice kindled from a
lamp.
‘No other than he who invented this Fable, could explain how many useful
lessons it affords. In the first place, it teaches that those whom you yourself
have brought up, may often be found the most hostile to you: then again, it
shows that crimes are punished not through the wrath of the Gods, but at the
time appointed by the Fates: lastly, it warns the good to use nothing in
common with the wicked.’
(transl. Smart)
What scholars and thinkers alike felt hard to come to terms with here, is the absence
of a personification – no foxes, no hares, no nothing: Lessing dismissed it as one of
the worst fables ever, especially as the poet himself had to add an explanation to it.
But should we be silly enough to fall for the trap laid out by a poet? By a poet, I
would like to add, who explains in the preface of his third book of fables that fables
were invented by slaves who, being prevented from speaking openly, had to
camouflage their messages? Slaves who, as Phaedrus puts it, would conceal their
attitude in similes, as to criticise the deplorable state of the world in made-up
imagery? Why would we want to believe him when he says that he offers us an
explanation of his own fable then?
Certainly, the poet seems to provide us with an aition, a myth-history of why one
must not desecrate sacred fire by lighting profane lamps on them, and that one must
not light sacred fires by using such worldly objects. Certainly, we may take away the
lesson that an offering – such as sacred fire – could be abused when taken away with
a lamp, then be held against the original provider of illumination. Certainly, we can be
amazed by this seemingly almost proto-Christian idea of a judgement day (rather than
immediate divine wrath). But is this what this poem is about? Certainly, we can be
amused by the idea that a deity would have a depressingly realistic view of the value
of tokens of sacrifice and of the motives of those who gave them – taking little
interest in them at all.
Let us consider, for just a moment there, what is happening here. The poem starts
with a reference to the object of my talk today, a lucerna – it is the first word,
followed by a reference to the perpetrator, the fur. The divine voice, sancta religio,
does not appear to mind the theft of meaningless trinkets – eventual passing away will
be enough of a punishment for that (which is a much more plausible reading of these
lines than the assumption that there is a proto-Christian notion of a judgement day, as
proposed by some scholars). But what really upsets the sancta religio is something
else, or in fact, the theft of something else: it is theft of the very fire itself, from the
sacred altar of Jupiter, to light the lucerna (regardless of what the lucerna gets used
subsequently).
The motive of ‘theft of fire’ is a common one, often utilised as a civilisatory narrative:
we find it in the Rig Veda, we find it in the myth of Prometheus. We find it in the
Christian bible, in the book of Enoch, we find it in civilisation outside the IndoEuropean sphere, including the Far East and the Americas. But this story, as told by
Phaedrus, is different: this is not fire used for the benefit of humankind, it is fire used
for personal benefit, and snatched away from its sacred origins with a depressing
everyday object.
What if this is what Phaedrus meant to tell us, then? What if an act, that can be seen
as quintessential for enlightenment, civilisation, liberation from dependence of
superstitions, gets corrupted, embodied in a depressing narrative of someone who
starts as Prometheus, but ends up to be a petty thief? A pretty bold reading, you may
say. But let us look just once again at the final interpretation that Phaedrus offers:
‘lastly, it warns the good to use nothing in common with the wicked’.
I wanted to end on this note, because I think it lends itself as a powerful image for
Higher Education and our Museum, a temple of the Muses. The enlightenment,
civilisation, liberation from dependence of superstitions that we have to offer is called
a University education, and all too often we see petty thieves with their little lamps –
whether they debate the value of Arts and Humanities subjects (as opposed to the
Sciences), whether they stress the usefulness of vocational degrees, or whether they
invoke the almighty idea of employability – we see petty thieves coming and trying to
snatch away something from that eternal flame of civilisation and humanity. We must
defend it, at any cost, in the interest of the good, and we must not use anything in
common with the wicked. Today, with the fantastic addition of objects to our Ure
collection, we have indeed taken another important step, and I am grateful to all of
you who have made this possible.