Spolia in Fortifications: Turkey, Syria and North Africa

Levels of Meaning in the Use of Spolia

We can frequently find perfectly good practical reasons for re-use, with no discernible rationale in either the aesthetic or the historical dimension. Foundations get re-used because they are convenient and strong; squared blocks because they are to hand or easily transportable to the site of the new works, being by the sea¹³⁸; tombstones make good facing panels or paving slabs; column shafts make good tie-bars; marble veneer is easily re-locatable; and marble makes excellent lime¹³⁹. Indeed, the use of classical blocks for quoins, with the remainder of tile, rubble and mortar, has been described as a rule-of-thumb building technique found all over Europe from the Tyne to the Tarygetus and extending chronologically from the late Roman to modern times.¹⁴⁰ Not that transport presented insuperable problems, if we are to believe a ninth-century account of using spolia from Estremadura and transporting them by river and sea to Santiago¹⁴¹. Similarly, the Muslims took spolia from Acre for Cairo, from Carthage to Damascus, and from the Dome of the Rock to Mecca.¹⁴²

In any search for meaningful spolia, a major problem is that in our area using spolia is the norm not the exception, since it is only natural to use what is to hand. But does using a Greek relief, with inscription, as a scrubbing board for washing, have meaning¹⁴³? Or a column shaft to keep an earth roof rolled flat¹⁴⁴? What about those cases where antiquities are used for support or as containers, such as pagan altars as holding up Christan altars, columns for cannon, or capitals as Holy Water stoups ? Is such reuse triumphalist in some way, or merely practical¹⁴⁵? For example, at Lepcis Magna, where a Roman triumphal arch is incorporated into the later enceinte¹⁴⁶. Grouping and consistency of such varied uses in the West would suggest that they do indeed carry meaning.¹⁴⁷ None of this, of course, excludes an aesthetic appreciation of the past, and an impulse to use it, possibly for propaganda purposes with which we might identify. There are good, practical reasons why some antique sites were left alone, and equally good ones why others were robbed bare. But could it ever be shown in East or West that architectural antiquities (and sculpture) were left alone precisely because they were antique, and therefore in some way special? Survival and re-use always seems to have involved practicalities: usefulness as a conversion; strength as a fortification; certainly prestige in a new location – but never apparently the almost exclusively 19 and 20^thth century reaction of preserving the past in its original state just because of its age and just because it is numinous.
The reputation of marble continues in the widespread reworking of antique slabs and columns for tomb markers. The practice continued in North Africa into this century,¹⁴⁸ and is observable on many sites in Turkey, such as the small cemetery amongst the Byzantine churches at Kanytelleis, where one uses an upturned Byzantine acanthus capital as headstone, and at least fifteen use parts of column shafts; the latest grave apparently dated 1965. The practice is also well documented by travellers. In 1800, a Frenchman reported the use of column shafts, some 15 feet high, as well as capitals, friezes and architraves - all in use as grave markers near the Maeander at the village of Guzzel-Kissana.¹⁴⁹ A little later, Arundell came across a Greek stone-mason at Denizli reworking a frieze into a tombstone. It had come from Laodicea (which the Muslims had sacked in 1188, admiring its marbled porticoes and stone buildings, and carting off the material to Syria¹⁵⁰): In fact, the immense quantities of stone which are daily brought from thence for building and other uses will very speedily destroy the remains, numerous as they are, which at present exist; and the demolition will be complete, as they have now begun to excavate, and are daily digging up and splitting the finest sculptured marbles.¹⁵¹ On at least one occasion the Crusaders may have built a fort at Antioch of Turkish tombstones, perhaps as a deliberate insult¹⁵² - although another source says that "pagan" sarcophagi were used.¹⁵³
Much less casual is the gathering of spolia for large monuments such as gates and arches. Constantine may be the first emperor to export spolia from West to East, and possibly in the other direction as well. Holloway contends, however, that there is no program, hence no real meaning, in the spolia on the Arch of Constantine, many shipped, he believes, from Greece or Asia Minor. For him, the spolia are simply a decorative but miscellaneous collection of sculpture, and hence no attempt to associate Constantine with the past grandeur of earlier Roman emperors. But is it likely that several cubic tons of marble, a long inscription, and so many reliefs, have been put together jigsaw-wise into a triumphal arch without plan, program or meaning? Or simply more likely that we can grasp the aesthetics but not specify the program? Without this apparently pioneering example of the application of spolia to political ends, can a specific rationale be found for later re-use of spolia beyond that of an appreciation of the beauty of the constituent materials (as in tombstones), or vague aesthetics? But by Holloway’s own argument, shipping enormous panels back from the East must surely have some aim, otherwise why not use equally "meaningless" panels from Rome? To which we should add other scholarly opinion that at least some of the reliefs came from the Forum of Trajan - a conjunction which must have been meaningful, as might the use of Pentelic marble.
So are there other instances of Constantine’s engagement with the past, which can help us? Yes: there is evidence at least of Constantine’s fondness for marbles and columns, because he insisted on high-quality materials, and on approving the objects selected for work on the sacred places of Jerusalem, which were to be gathered from various unspecified locations; and given the phraseology there is a high likelihood that he meant spolia¹⁵⁴. Again, his adornment of Constantinople can surely be seen as an antiquarian act, and one continued by hjis successors¹⁵⁵: pagan priests were ordered to bring statues out of wherever they had hidden them; precious metals were stripped from them and melted down for the public purse, and the bronzes were kept to adorn the City¹⁵⁶. (The deliberate hiding of pagan antiquities continues right up to Late Antiquity¹⁵⁷.)
A Turkish story may reflect a folk-memory of Constantine's gathering of spolia: Constantinople was built by Solomon, who wanted a pompissimo palazzo. The steps taken to build it may reflect knowledge of spolia fortifications still extant in the Greek Islands, such as Paros: Solomon commanded the winds to built the palace, in search of the materials for which they went through Arabia, Persia, India, and so on, and finally arrived alli nobilissimi paesi della Grecia, ad un luogo vicino all’Archipelago, posto tra la Seruta e la Ionia, trouvorono un luogo molto ameno, chiamato li monti d’Aidingik, ove si trovano ancora li vestigi, e chiamato il luogo della circuittone, la fabricorono con grandissima diligenza la rocca e il Palazzo; mentre questi spiriti correvano per il mondo, trovorono in Berez e in Kaf molte minere di marmore del quale, come anco de altri adobbamenti ne portorono seco, preparorono marmore di diversi colori, formorono diverse colonne, fre le quali n’erano ancora colonne porfiretiche, le quali havevano preparate nel paese di Kaf, e hoggi di si vedono in Constantinopoli nella Chiesa di Santa Sofia (dicono che il altri luoghi non si trova pietra Porfiretica) convenuti li spiriti, fabricarono una rocca e un Palazzo, al quale nissuno era simile nell’universo.¹⁵⁸ Other stories concern Arabic building to rival those of fabled antiquity¹⁵⁹, including the use of marble and glass.¹⁶⁰
Such stories record effort, if not meaning. But we can record meaning in the accurate reuse of spolia in Turkish sites. At Ephesus, the Baths of Scolastica are of spolia, and we cannot determine a programme therein; however, the nearby Temple of Hadrian, the restoration of which can be precisely dated to 383, used spolia reliefs of the city's founding, together with representations of Theodosius and Arcadius, in order to underline the continuity of tradition.¹⁶¹ This, at the very least, is the meaning of the Arch of Constantine, and the peopling of Constantinople with spolia from Rome, where the present is associated with the past. It is also the impulse for military use of spolia, as we shall see below.