Two for Tuesday: Porto Rafti and Thessaloniki in Late Antiquity

As I’ve gotten older and my bandwidth has become more attenuated, I’ve mostly fallen out of the habit of reading new journals when they appear. There are a few that I keep an eye on, though, and more often than not read some of them: the AJA, Hesperia, and the Historical Archaeology. 

Last week, Hesperia 95.1 (2026) appeared. It had two articles that attracted my attention immediately. First, an article by Sarah Murray, Phil Sapirstein, and Joey Frankl titled “The Colossus of Porto Raphti: New Finds from the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS) Project,” and then one by Michalis Karambinis on “St. Demetrios, the Gladiatorial Combats, and the Stadium of Thessaloniki.”

Both articles deal with Late Antiquity. 

Article the First

20+ years ago, Tim Gregory and I spent a few hours wandering around the Hellenistic or Late Classical fortified site of Koroni. From the rocky ruins of the peninsula, we looked out over the little harbor of Porto Rafti and the sun literally glinted off the marble monument on Raftis Island. I was unfamiliar with the monument and asked: what is that? Tim replied: “it’s the Rafti! And he’s making our pants!”

Tim had, of course, been to the island and many other near shore islands researching the use of these so-called “islands of refuge” in Late Antiquity. Tim’s work had pushed back against the idea that displaced residents scurried to these islands to avoid Slavic depredations. Instead, he argued that the use of these nearshore islands showed the intensity of Late Roman land use in Greece and reflected a prosperous and densely populated countryside into the 6th and 7th centuries.

Murray, Sapirstein, and Frankl argue that the Rafti monument was likely erected in the Late Roman period. The statue of a seated figure dates to the 2nd century and probably derived from a sanctuary nearby — perhaps Rhamnous or a sanctuary of Isis at nearby Brauron. For reasons unknown to anyone save the Late Romans, it was re-erected on this island. Evidence for a Late Roman date for the installation on Raftis island comes mainly from the scatter of Late Roman pottery both on the island and evidence for significant activities — a church and other seaside installations — in the harbor itself. The authors offer the suggestion that the monument could have served as a navigational aid.

To be clear, a significant part of the article involves a careful discussion of the monument itself and the sculpture including the use of 3D scans to join virtually a marble fragment with the monument. The authors also navigate the very “American School” discussion over whether the statue represents a male figure — perhaps an emperor — or a female deity. This is all carefully argued and reasonable.  

Article the Second

Michalis Karambinis’s article on the connection between St. Demetrios and gladiatorial combat in the stadium in Thessaloniki. Karambinis examines the three versions of St. Demetrios’s martyrdom. For the uninitiated, St. Demetrios’s martyrdom stemmed from his connection with a young man named Nestor who defeated the Emperor Galarius’s favorite gladiator in the stadium. Nestor was a Christian and either received a blessing or prayers from St. Demetrios whom the emperor had recently imprisoned in a nearby bath for being Christian. When the emperor made the connection between Nestor and Demetrios and the death of his favorite gladiator, he ordered Demetrios’s (and Nestor’s) death. Demetrios’s body was then buried near where he was imprisoned and executed, and this is the current location of the church that bears his name.

Karambinis argues that the account of Demetrios’s martyrdom called the Passio prima which has a terminus ante quem of the late 6th or early 7th century contains details of the stadium which would have been obscure to later authors. Indeed later authors, unable to understand, much less reconstruct this detail, simplified or just ignored it. Karambinis, however, mines these details and compares them to archaeological evidence to suggest that they offer a plausible description of the fences erected around stadia to protect the audience from animals or wayward combatants during the games. This, in turn, suggests that author of the Passio prima had access to an account that dates to closer to the early 4th century when such arrangements would have been familiar both to the reader and the audience.

This is significant because it supports Karambinis’s argument that the source for the Passio prima would have also understood the spatial relationship between the stadium, the baths, and the spot of St. Demetrios’s martyrdom (and later church). This then, offers an insight into the topography of Late Roman Thessaloniki by supporting the location of the ancient stadium adjacent to the later church of St. Demetrios rather than further east near the church of Ay. Sophia, the ancient hippodrome, and the so-called “Palace of Galerius.”

Thessaloniki has always enjoyed some scholarly attention as a major Late Roman and Byzantine city, but it has never enjoyed the kind of detailed scrutiny of Rome, Athens, or Constantinople. It’s intriguing to see a piece like this which uses a well-known source in a careful and thoughtful intervention in the urban landscape of Thessaloniki.