No Dal Molin: The Antibase Movement in Vicenza

2012 ◽  
Vol 111 (4) ◽  
pp. 839-846
Author(s):  
Marco Palma

In 2006 the citizens of Vicenza, Italy, discovered that for three years US authorities, the Italian government, and city officials had been negotiating secretly to approve the construction of a new military base on the only large undeveloped area in the northern part of the city and the largest aquifer in northern Italy. Beginning in the adjacent neighborhoods, a mobilization arose against the construction of the military installation. In a few months hundreds of thousands of residents were demonstrating in the city, and various forms of direct action against the base became a daily occurrence. Thus was born an extraordinary experiment in democratic political participation.

Author(s):  
Simon James

From the junction of H and 8th Sts, which gave access to the twin main axes of the military base zone on the plateau, H St led S to the bulk of the civil town and ultimately to the Palmyrene Gate, the steppe plateau W of the city, and the roads W to Palmyra and NW up the Euphrates to Syria. The fourth side of the crossroads followed a curving course SE, down into the inner wadi, then snaking through the irregularly laid-out old lower town to the now-lost River Gate, portal to the Euphrates and its plain. Of most immediate significance is that the Wadi Ascent Road also linked the plateau military zone with what can now be seen as another major area of military control, in the old Citadel, and on the adjacent wadi floor. The N part of the wadi floor is now known to have accommodated two military-built temples, the larger of which, the A1 ‘Temple of the Roman Archers’, was axial to the long wadi floor, which in the Roman period appears to have comprised one of the largest areas of open ground inside the city walls. This is interpreted as the campus, or military assembly and training ground, extension of which was commemorated in an inscription found in the temple. In 2011, what is virtually certainly a second military temple was found in the wadi close by the first, built against the foundation of the Citadel. This is here referred to as the Military Zeus Temple. Behind the Temple of the Roman Archers was a lane leading from the Wadi Ascent Road to the N gate of the Citadel. It helped define a further de facto enclosure, effectively surrounded by other military-controlled areas and so also presumed to have been in military hands. The Citadel itself, while in Roman times already ruinous on the river side due to cliff falls, still formed part of the defences. Moreover the massive shell of its Hellenistic walls now also appears to have been adapted to yet more military accommodation, some of it two storeys or higher.


Author(s):  
Simon James

This project has explored the archaeology of Dura’s imperial Roman military base, and also considered other material traces of the presence of soldiers in the city, e.g. at the Palmyrene Gate and creation of urban baths. As such it here synthesizes the archaeological evidence of a literal quarter (or more) of this globally important archaeological site. It offers an example of the still under-appreciated potential of ‘legacy data sets’ and archival archaeology, and of resurveying ‘old sites’, to generate significant new knowledge, making best use of limited resources. It also considers ‘legacy ideas’ as well as more recent publications to generate new understandings of garrison, base, and city. I hope that this volume will further constitute a useful contribution to the study of the Roman armies, and the soldiers in their ranks. I also hope that it will establish that the military aspect is a vital part of the story of Dura itself, especially for the Roman era, and that the military base and the people who lived in it cannot be treated as literally and figuratively peripheral to Durene studies. The foregoing presents what has been a visually led project, and also one of space and of movement within it. It was conducted through a combination of examining the largely image-based archival records of the Yale/French Academy expedition and direct observation of the fabric of the city, especially of the remains exposed by the original excavations as they were between 2005 and 2010. It has also generated entirely new data expanding the picture through geophysical prospection of the unexcavated portions of the base area and vicinity. Physically moving around the topography of the former city and, where it was still partially upstanding, through some of its spaces, provided many key insights. Others derived from considering plans, aerial photographs, magnetometry plots, and recent satellite images. Not least, interpretations arose from generating the new drawings, largely plans, featured in this book.


Author(s):  
Simon James

Such was the extent of the base in its final form, before the disruptions of the 250s. But how and when did it reach this extent and conformation? As we have seen, the small number of direct epigraphic dates coming from key structures in the military base concentrate c.209–16. While the Yale expedition were aware that there had been resident Roman auxiliaries from the later second century, and also identified (mostly erroneously) some components as belonging to the 220s–250s, they took this ‘epigraphic dating horizon’ as indicating that the military base, from camp wall to principia to baths, amphitheatre, and campus, including creation of most military accommodation, was overwhelmingly a rapid creation of the 210s. This notion of a sudden military transformation of the urban fabric at that time supposedly reflected a radical expansion of numbers of the Roman garrison—resulting in traumatic shock to the city. The concentration of dated inscriptions from the military base does seem to constitute a tight ‘epigraphic dating horizon’ c.209–16, or indeed c.209–12 if the amphitheatre was really an opportunistic coda. It certainly represents a major military building campaign. However, it has been misinterpreted, and its significance exaggerated, especially in taking it to mark effective creation of the base. Central to the ‘epigraphic horizon’, of course, is the dating of the principia to 211–12, with rebuilding of the Mithraeum around the same time. Other components of the programme may be implied by epigraphic information. Notably the detail of the undated inscription attesting building of the A1 Temple of the Roman Archers and expansion of the campus plausibly fits in the context of the 210s. However, the Yale project team pushed interpretation of the epigraphic evidence much too far in employing other texts to date military structures. While the ‘camp wall’ may well also have been built c.210, the epigraphic argument for this, comprising an inscription of debated reading not even found in proximity to the wall, is flimsy in the extreme. Similar misuse of epigraphic evidence is seen in the case of the three altars to Dolichenus found in X7.


Siddhayatra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Muhammad Riyad Nes

The military installation is a defense building that is specifically established,strengthened and closed, serves to protect an area or army from enemy attacks. The purpose of this paper is to find out the shape and function of military installations in the city of Palembang. This research method consists of the stages of data collection and special analysis using a spatial approach. The results of this study indicate that military installations in the city of Palembang have several forms, namely irregular shapes, U, rectangular, rectangular and circular / circular shapes. The function of the military installation is to maintain the oil mining area in the city of Palembang and as a base of defense and a place to spy on the enemy.


2018 ◽  
pp. 369-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cook

(27 JANUARY 2015) [Trans.: Abdulbasit Kassim] Available at: http://jihadology.net/2015/01/27/al-urwah-al-wuthqa-foundation-presents-a-new-video-message-from-from-boko-%e1%b8%a5arams-jamaat-ahl-al-sunnah-li-dawah-wa-l-jihad-interview-with-the-official-spokesma/ From 3–7 January 2015, Boko Haram attacked Baga, a town on the border with Chad, and gained control over the military base of the multinational Joint Task Force. According to Amnesty International, the attack on Baga, which claimed as many as 2,000 lives, was the deadliest attack in the history of Boko Haram. Although the Nigerian military underestimated the number of casualties, Abu Mus‘ab al-Barnawi, son of Muhammad Yusuf, in this interview explained the reasons Boko Haram attacked Baga and the strategic importance of the city to the group and the Nigerian military. This video and the next video (text 54) are unique for the fact that they were issued under a new media agency, al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqā, and did not mention Shekau at all, while the style and contents of the videos carry many of the messages of Ansaru, protesting Muslim civilian deaths. It is likely that the speaker in this video represented a faction of Boko Haram that comprised of former Ansaru members who reintegrated with Boko Haram ...


Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian

The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city—a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. This book explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule. The book probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. The book explores a problem faced by generations of Romans—how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.


1955 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 106-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Caputo ◽  
Richard Goodchild

Introduction.—The systematic exploration of Ptolemais (modern Tolmeita), in Cyrenaica, began in 1935 under the auspices of the Italian Government, and under the direction of the first-named writer. The general programme of excavation took into consideration not only the important Hellenistic period, which gave the city its name and saw its first development as an autonomous trading-centre, but also the late-Roman age when, upon Diocletian's reforms, Ptolemais became capital of the new province of Libya Pentapolis and a Metropolitan See, later occupied by Bishop Synesius.As one of several starting-points for the study of this later period, there was selected the area first noted by the Beecheys as containing ‘heaps of columns’, which later yielded the monumental inscriptions of Valentinian, Arcadius, and Honorius, published by Oliverio. Here excavation soon brought to light a decumanus, running from the major cardo on the west towards the great Byzantine fortress on the east. Architectural and other discoveries made in 1935–36 justified the provisional title ‘Monumental Street’ assigned to this ancient thoroughfare. In terms of the general town-plan, which is extremely regular, this street may be called ‘Decumanus II North’, since two rows of long rectangular insulae separate it from the Decumanus Maximus leading to the West Gate, still erect. The clearing of the Monumental Street and its frontages revealed the well-known Maenad reliefs, attributed to the sculptor Callimachus, a late-Roman triple Triumphal Arch, and fragments of monumental inscriptions similar in character to those previously published from the same area.


1974 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
Robert Montilla

The Lafayette Theatre of New York was built and owned by Charles W. Sandford (1796–1878), a colorful and sometimes eccentric personality, whose careers in law, business, and the military, combined with a personal predilection for pomp and display, made him a prominent member of New York's society. As a businessman, Sandford made and lost “several fortunes” in the course of his eventful life in a variety of financial speculations that included investments in real estate, hardware, and theatres. Most of these ended disastrously for him, but his ventures accrued enough profit to allow him to live stylishly all his life, entertain every prominent guest of the city and, on his death in 1878, leave his family a “comfortable competency.” As a lawyer, Sandford handled several celebrated cases and, being generally considered “among the finest” members of his profession, was eventually named vice-president of the New York Bar Association. But it was in his career as a soldier that his love for horses, parades, and gilded uniforms was most manifest and which led Sandford to erect the first full-scale equestrian theatre in America.


1994 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Guedea

Beginning in 1808 the people started to play a prominent role in the political life of Mexico. This article examines the significant growth of popular political participation in the City of Mexico during the period 1808-1812. In particular, it analyzes the substantial role that the people played in the elections of 1812, a role they would continue to play in the early years of the new nation.


2000 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 17-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Robertson

AbstractTWO hundred years ago today, on 22 January 1799, French troops forced their way into the city of Naples. In doing so, they confirmed the authority of the Neapolitan Republic which had been proclaimed, one and indivisible, the day before by a group of patriots who had taken control of the Castel Sant'Elmo, the fortress on the hill immediately above the centre of the city. Thus began the last of the revolutions which can be regarded as the offspring of the great French Revolution of 1789. There is no denying that the Neapolitan Revolution, like its predecessors in northern Italy and elsewhere, depended on French military intervention. The patriots were not in control of the city before 22 January, and needed the French to quell the popular violence and disorder which had swept the city for the previous week. And when, after three months, the French withdrew their forces, the republicans' hold on the city was too precarious to last more than a few weeks.


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