The Roman Bath at Isthmia and the Hexamilion, Part II

Yesterday, I spent a little time exploring some of the evidence that exists at the Roman bath at Isthmia that might be useful for re-dating the Hexamilion wall. This was prompted by a recent article by Guy Sanders. What I’m writing about today will make more sense if you read yesterday’s post, but I can maybe summarize it by saying: the complicated nature of the post-abandonment history of the bath and some tricky excavation practices has made it a bit challenging to sort out the chronology of the building and the Hexamilion.

That said, we can add a bit more to our understanding of the post-abandonment sequences in the bath:

After the deposition of the level associated with the lamps and burned earth that appears in Rooms I and VI, a ditch was cut both through this level and through the mosaic floor along the entire length of the northern side of Room VI. While it is not entirely clear, there is a chance that the cutting of this ditch compromised the burned level especially since it is not certain the excavators recognized the ditch until they discovered at the level of (or just above the) mosaic floor. 

It’s hard to know the purpose of this ditch. It might be part of ad hoc industrial activity, perhaps channeling water from one area to another in the later history of Room VI. Gregory suggests that it was cut to carry a pipe, but no pipe was added. It cuts through a robbing trench associated with the removal of the East wall of Room VI, but since Room VI had a north-south vault, this would not have necessarily compromised the roof of the the room. The ditch or drain appears to flow east to west.

On its west side, it fed into an earlier settling basin which, in turn, fed a pipe that then ran north into Room II where it fed into a deep drain that emptied into a massive chamber that must have flowed under the north wall of the bath at some point. The drain seemed sufficiently large to continue to function even if its outlet was blocked by the construction of the Hexamilion wall which means that this drain may have functioned even if the Hexamilion wall was already in existence. In any event, the ditch along the north side of Room VI, which cut through the lamp deposit, included debris from the destruction of the bath: marble revetment fragments, plaster fragments, and so on.

The only reason to mention the ditch or drain cut in Room VI is that it is part of a drainage system that was blocked by a burial sometime in the sixth century, it would seem. This burial is in a drain associated with the Roman bath which would have flowed under the mosaic floor from Room I to Room II where it would have emptied into the same deep drain which received the water from the ditch cut in Room VI. The drain in Room II appears to have been opened at some point, perhaps serving a similar function to the drain in Room VI. In fact, it was open long enough for a “fine gray silt” to collect in the drain. This open drain in Room II was closed by burial 76-002 which Joe Rife published in Isthmia 9. There is a very worn lamp (IPL 76-2) associated with this burial that appears to date to the first half of the 6th century. This dates the burial to sometime around the middle of the 6th century.

This is significant, in the broadest sense, because this burial seems to me to be the latest datable activity on the floor the northern part of the Roman bath, and it likely marks the last phase of use for the ad hoc drain system installed in Room VI and Room II (although the drain in Room VI would have continued to function because the burial does not interrupt the flow of water north into the deep drain in the southwest corner of Room II).

After this burial, the walls of the northern part of the bath seems to have started to collapse burying the floors and created more or less sealed deposits.

The point of this digression is that we can bracket the construction of the Hexamilion wall along the northern side of the Roman bath by this burial of the mid-sixth century and the bath going out of use in the late fourth century.

The latest context associated with the use of the bath seems to come from under the ash found in the furnace below Room III which Gregory states extended well into the 4th century indicating that the furnace remained in use until around 400. This is context 08-024 according to Gregory’s 1995 report on the bath in Hesperia. The material from this level, which is unpublished and did not produce any inventoried artifacts, would appear to be a better candidate for assessing the date of the Hexamilion wall. If the material in this level drifts toward the mid or even later 5th century (and I’m not hinting that it would), then we would have to reassess an early 5th century date for the wall since it is unlikely that the bath would still be functioning while the northern part of the building became part of a major fortification.

At the same time, the abandonment levels identified by Birgitta Wohl on the floor of Room I would still suggest that the bath remained open for a time between the end of its use as a bath and the construction of the wall (and the subsequent dumping of material into these rooms). These open rooms must have been an appealing place to dump debris (including a burned material and numerous fragment of Roman lamps). At some point after Room I served as a dump and the east wall of Room VI was robbed out, a ditch was cut in the mosaic floor of Room VI indicating that some activity persisted in what then must have been a decrepit building, but this activity would have come to an end, with the insertion of a burial in the same ad hoc system of drains after the middle of the sixth century.

It is clear that by this time the Hexamilion stood along the north side of the bath.

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To be clear, I think that Sanders’ efforts to redate Roman pottery and lamps and associated contexts is absolutely spot on and vital for the reappraisal of the “Late Roman” or “Early Byzantine” period in Greece (and further afield). In fact, I would have no objection to the idea that the Hexamilion wall should be dated a century later than its current date.

I would find it pretty appealing to imagine that the Hexamilion dated to the end of the fifth or even early sixth century. It would fit well into Anastasius I efforts both to fortify the empire (e.g. the so-called “Anastasian Wall” in Thrace) and his interest in expanding his influence over the Balkans during a time of theological and political friction. There is good evidence that Procopius credited fortifications built by Anastasius and Justin to Justinian in other contexts. The famous theologically-twinged inscriptions associated with Isthmia and perhaps Corinth that name Justinian and Victorinus (IG IV, 204 and 205), might intentionally evoke the theological tensions associated with Justinian’s predecessor (this wouldn’t be inconsistent with my take on this here).

In other words, there remains work to do to understand the historical circumstances associated with the Hexamilion wall, the Roman bath, and the larger history of the sanctuary at Isthmia. I’m looking forward to doing my part in an effort to sort this out in the coming years.