The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya, Final Reports, Volume VIII. Donald O. White

analyses of the province’s historical development from the time of Augustus and his dynastic successors until the A.D. 115 outbreak of the Jewish Rebellion emphasize how, notwithstanding periodic clashes with native tribal elements from the Syrtic Gulf area, this was an interval of relatively sustained peace and stability within the borders of the region¹⁷ On the other hand, the prosperous material conditions which theoretically should have prevailed during the 1st c. A.D. for the most part find only a lackluster reflection in Cyrenaican architecture¹⁸ and, to an even lesser extent, in the region’s sculptural output¹⁹ Understandably, in light of the battery of circumstances that can affect their distribution, survival, and modern recovery, coins can be counted on to provide an even less reliable picture, most notoriously those extracted from excavation sites including our own; but according to the available evidence, the production of coinage undergoes a sharp reduction at this time²⁰ It therefore seems accurate to say that it remains the ancient literary records²¹ supplemented by the region’s slowly expanding body of inscriptions^,22 which leave us with the bulk of our historically useful information about the province during the century and a half preceding the rebellion. The portrait which these sources combine to create is one of a region for the most part benefit-ting from Roman rule but at a level which falls well short of brilliant.

      As far as Cyrene goes, the more noteworthy architectural contributions for this period would have to include its newly constructed Gymnasium-Caesareum complex,²³ the agora’s Augusteum²⁴ and rededicated Portico B5,²⁵ the Trajanic Baths,²⁶ and the extensive modifications carried out on the two temples dedicated to its principal gods, Apollo²⁷ and Zeus.²⁸ While nearly all mirror in various ways the impact of the province’s imperial administration, none can be said to break fresh ground as architecture. In a generalized way, this conforms to the situation said to prevail throughout much of the Greek world starting in the last decades of the 1st c. B.C. Thus we see in the opinion of one scholar how, “by a neat irony, the lifetime of Jesus coincided with a temporary low point in the shrines and externals of much pagan worship.”²⁹

      More to the point, the sponsors, designers and builders of Cyrene’s monuments appear to be almost complacently oblivious to the ways in which concrete and brick construction were elsewhere revolutionizing building practices through arch, vault, and dome applications. Concrete and vault-dependent multiple terrace solutions, already strongly in place by the later 2nd c. B.C. in the West,³⁰ and the impressive scenographic effects still being achieved in stone during the first century and a half of imperial rule in the Roman East³¹ are for the most past alien to this provincial landscape. To cite merely a single technical development among many, the Forum Iulium’s Venus Genetrix Temple at Rome introduces the half-domed apse as the setting for the god’s statue³² and which is later to house the living emperor or his image. But this architectural invention finds no echo in Pentapolis building practices much before the Byzantine period. Perhaps the one exception to this widespread regional disinterest in vaults is provided by regional bridge and water storage projects.

      One could continue in this vein to the evident disadvantage of the local architectural tradition. Seen from another angle, however, the strengths of the region could be equally well argued to lie precisely in its conservatism, which is perhaps best expressed in a continuing mastery of cut stone³³ in the Doric idiom³⁴ combined with a persistent reuse of time-tested building forms. Seen in this light, Synesios’s centuries-later crankish boast of personal descent from Eurysthenes³⁵ simply may be giving us a valuable glimpse into what was once a broad-based, deeply embedded cultural bias.

      Another factor to be weighed into consideration is the region’s isolated geographic position. The upland gebel zone is seriously landlocked by formidable deserts on three of its four sides.³⁶ Although the southern tip of Laconia is only half as far from Cyrene as Alexandria, travel over the open sea remained a greater impediment to cultural exchange than coastal seafaring and movement by land despite their attendant risks. Where external influence on Cyrenaican architecture can be detected during the period under review, it inevitably comes from the east and especially Alexandria, which had remained culturally as well as politically joined at the hip with Pentapolis since the days of Magas.

      Sjöqvist and Ward-Perkins saw specific reflections of this relationship in Alexandria’s lost Kaisareion, as well as the Ptolemaic pre-basilica complex at Hermopolis Magna, and in the layout of the Cyrene Caesareum complex.³⁷ Stucchi has proposed the Pharos at Alexandria as the archetype for the striking vertical elevation of Ptolemais’s Mausoleum No. 2 (“Tomb of the Pharaoh”),³⁸ while at the same time pointing out similarities between Alexandrian hypogeum burials “a peristilio di casa” and a number of Cyrene rock-cut burials.³⁹ Wright argues for the influence of Alexandria on Ptolemais’s urban domestic villas, echoes of which also may be seen in the layouts of Alexandria’s hypogeum tombs at Sidi Gaber and Anfushy.⁴⁰ The Alexandrian foot unit of 0.365 m. has been documented in a number of buildings in Ptolemais and Cyrene, including, so it would seem, the sanctuary’s own S7 Sacred House.⁴¹ It scarcely needs to be added how commentators from Pesce onward have regarded Ptolemais’ Palazzo delle colonne—in which, incidentally, the excavators found three pieces of Egyptian sculpture⁴²—as a “Musterbeispiel of domestic architecture in the Alexandrine manner.”⁴³

      As we shall presently see, during its 31 B.C.–A.D. 115 development, the Demeter and Persephone Sanctuary rising on the south slope of Wadi Bel Gadir (P1. 1) did gain a number of fresh architectural additions as well as modifications to already existing features. Paralleling the situation just noted elsewhere in the city, two sanctuary sculptural dedications honoring members of the Julio-Claudian family⁴⁴ may have stemmed from tangible benefits directly conferred on the twin goddesses’ cult by the imperial government (not, however, otherwise confirmed) or by wealthier practitioners finding themselves, for whatever reason, the benefi-ciaries of Roman rule. An example of the latter may be M. Romanius Epulo, whose dedicatory inscription paying homage to Ceres Augusta was found by the Department of Antiquities in the area of the Lower Sanctuary in the winter of 1987/88.⁴⁵ In addition, we can assume, on the analogy with the cult of Apollo,⁴⁶ that the sanctuary must have gone on receiving financial support from revenues drawn from temple estates as well as from taxes levied against locally produced agricultural products.⁴⁷ Whatever the causes, the net result is that the early Roman-era sanctuary grew substantially larger than its predecessors.

Plate 1. Photomontage of the extramural Wadi Bel Gadir area surrounding the Demeter and Persephone sanctuary, taken by David Hopkins in the summer of 2007, 29 years after the latter’s final clearance by the University of Pennsylvania.

      Before detailing this phase, it may be useful to summarize the previous developments described earlier in the fifth volume of this series.⁴⁸ The patchily preserved late 7th century B.C. archetype consisted of an open-air terrace apparently subdivided by rubble peribolos walls into two unequal parts.A two-or perhaps three-room naiskos was backed against the rear precinct wall to face away from the city. By the late 6th, early 5th B.C. century the goddesses’ sacred precinct had grown to include upper and lower terraces, defined by well-built pseudoisodomic peribolos walls. The rising bedrock across the lower zone housed three small ashlar-constructed naiskoi or sacred houses; the upper level accommodated a partially preserved rectangular room complex (S2-S4) of still unidentified purpose.

      While essentially retaining the double-tiered layout of earlier times (now accessed by stairs), in the Hellenistic phase the number of independent sacred houses increased to four, and a couple of storage rooms and two fountain installations were added.

      At this point, the obvious steps left to be undertaken were to expand farther down the slope, formalize access to both the bottom and top levels, and finally, to create a focus for the entire complex in the form of some kind of large, climactic structure.

      17. Romanelli 1943, 67–103; Goodchild 1963, 19–21; Goodchild 1971, 38–41; Applebaum 1979, 202–15; Stucchi 1975, 195–96; Laronde 1988, 1015 passim; Lloyd