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| The Peristyle of Diocletian's Palace, showing entrance to the Emperor's quarters Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Head from a statue of Diocletian (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
My preferred method of travel, of visiting a place, is just to
mooch about, ignoring the churches (I never visit churches, believing religions
are the work of the devil) and museums, and concentrating instead on those sidewalk
cafés from which one can watch the world
go by. I have to confess it is not the ideal way to see a city like Split, a
metropolis of 200,000 people, which regards itself as the cosmopolitan centre
of the Adriatic. It is a city that can boast of having already had, in its
original location five kilometres from the present city, a population of 60,000, when it was first mentioned in history
more than 2100 years ago.
Two shots of many taken by myself and my partner, Sheila, inside Diocletian's Palace, showing the excellent restoration of the walls
The
present city’s claim to historical fame rests on Diocletian’s Palace, a huge
affair which was built in the fourth century AD by a local boy made good,
Diocles, or to give him his full Latin moniker Gaius
Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, a Croatian who rose to be
Emperor of Rome, and chose to return home to live after his retirement.
Everyone talks
airily about Diocletian’s palace, and
yet I never met anyone in Croatia so far who talks about how it was that a man
of such modest birth in an outlying territory of the empire, managed to accede
to the halls of supreme power. So I have looked him up and since I found the
account of his life and work in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica so interesting, I have taken the liberty of reproducing some
passages from it in the hope that it may interest anyone who reads this.
First of all
until he acceded to power, he lived most of his life in army camps. He came to
power because of his position in the Roman army, and not without performing
some of the skulduggery normal to his times: for instance, apparently killing
one of his rivals. Once in power,
however, he appears to have been mainly interested in reviving the Roman empire
from its anarchistic and degenerated state, and with that object in mind he
shared power with three other men on whom he also bestowed the title of
emperor. As the Britannica writes:
“All his reforms led toward a kind of centralized and
absolute monarchy that
put effective means of action at his disposal. Thus, Diocletian designated
the consuls;
the senators no longer collaborated in the making of laws; the imperial
counsellors (consilia sacra) were distributed among specialized
offices, and their functions were strictly defined so that the power of the praetorian prefects (personal
bodyguards to the emperor) was limited; the specialization of administrative
work grew; and the number of bureaucrats increased. This was the beginning of
the bureaucracy and technocracy that was
eventually to overrun modern societies.”
In other words, he was a modern-minded kind of
fellow, this Diocletian. Further:
“A conservative,
Diocletian was concerned with the preservation of the ancient virtues: the
obligation of children to feed their parents in old age; of parents to treat
their children justly; of spouses to respect the laws of marriage; of sons not to bear witness against
their fathers, or slaves against their masters; and of private property,
creditor’s rights, and contract clauses to be protected. He forbade the use
of torture if
truth could be discovered otherwise and encouraged governors to be as
autonomous as possible.”
And, finally, in summary of his achievements, the
encyclopaedia writes:
“He
may be accused of several things: of having been cruel, but his harshness was
not the act of deep-seated brutality; of being miserly, but this miserliness
was inspired by the desire to obtain resources for the state; of cutting a
slightly muddle-headed, visionary figure, but these were the traits that led
him to reflect on better methods of governing an immense territory; of having
paved the way to bureaucracy and technocracy, but this was done
with greater efficiency in view. Personally, Diocletian was a religious man. No
doubt he did not manifest any unusual piety, but he always thought that the
gods of the emperors governed the world. He exercised an absolute, divine right
monarchy, and he surrounded it with majesty.”
The
main fault held against him nowadays is that he persecuted the Christians, his
persecutions giving rise not to their decline, but rather to a strengthening of
their convictions. For myself I could wish that he might have strangled this
religion at birth, so we would not be confronted with its numerous mistakes,
and constant wars, and heavy hand on the personalities of individuals right
into our own day. We might well have been better off without it, But there you
go, we are stuck with what history has handed down to us.
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| The extremely ancient walls have been added to with modern installations, as shown here, without affecting the overall coherence of the total |
Diocletian
abdicated as emperor in 305 AD, after 21
years of power, and died, more or less in obscurity, six years later.
Thereafter the palace, as it was called (though it was far more extensive than
a mere palace) lay empty and abandoned for several centuries and was used only
occasionally by, for example, some local people seeking shelter there from
invading Croats. But from the seventh century, the palace has been used as a
place of residence and business. It was virtually unknown to Europeans until in
1764 a Scottish architect, Robert Adam, and a French artist collaborated on a book celebrating its ruins, a book whose
influence later, for the first time, brought measured drawings into the design
vocabulary of European architecture. At one time the palace housed as many as
9,000 people, but today, although there are many shops, restaurants and hotels
within the walls, that has been reduced to 1,000, and there are now severe
restrictions on what can and cannot be built within the walls.
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| Just outside the Palace walls, a resident has hung his/her washing, adding a human touch to a beautiful building |
Centrepiece
today is the so-called peristyle an
elegant open space that leads to the former emperor’s quarters. I will have no
difficulty remembering this name, because I had a booking in one of the hotels,
the Peristel, but when I arrived I
found I had mistakenly made the booking for two nights later than the day we
arrived, ready to take up residence. At my age, this is a humiliating mistake
to make, suggesting the onset of a mild dementia. I comforted myself by remembering
that the last time I made that sort of idiotic mistake had been when I was a
young reporter in my home town of Invercargill, New Zealand, more than 60 years
ago, when I was hauled on to the editorial carpet because I had reported that an
accused person had pleaded guilty to murder, when I knew perfectly well that he
had pleaded not guilty. What I had done was to omit the word “not” in my copy,
and thereafter had failed to notice its admission when I reviewed my copy.
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| Growing up in the south of New Zealand, I never heard of garlic. But in Italian life, garlic is never far away, as this shot of garlic sellers outside the walls shows |
In
exactly that way, I had booked two nights for Jan 1 and 2, had approved the
booking when I made it, and yet had it in my mind --- never a doubt entering
--- that the booking I made was for Dec 30 and 31. I know I will not last
another sixty years, but I will never forget, for however long I may live, the name of the hotel, the Peristel.
Fortunately for us, they were able to find
a room for us on each of the two nights of our stay, but the experience
--- I had to pay a hefty penalty for cancellation of my original booking ---
has taught me that I have to check, and recheck my copy from here on.
Like
Zagreb, Split is the site of an immense, and immensely impressive statue, at
least three times the size of an ordinary man, which has been moved around from
place to place, even removed during the Italian occupation of the town during
the Second World War, but has been re-instated in a position not far from one
of the gates. This statue is of a man known in history as Gregory of Nin (or
Grgur Ninski) by dint of his having been bishop of Nin from 926 for three years.
Exceptionally, in those days, he opposed the reigning Pope, and dedicated his
main efforts to replacing Latin in the church services with the local Croatian
language. He did not last long, having failed in a struggle with a neighbouring
bishop, leading to the abolition of his bishopric. The sculptor, Ivan
Mestrovic, is also a man of interest, widely recognized as one of the greatest
sculptors of Europe during the days of such others as Rodin, Brancusi,
Giacommetti. A village boy from the Dalmatian hinterland, he was spotted as a
remarkable talent at the age of 16, educated in Vienna, and had become a
sculptor of note by the First World War. Thereafter he moved back to the
then-Yugoslavia, but during the Second World War he was arrested by the Ustache
fascist government of Croatia, and after the war he moved to the United States.
He was invited to return to Yugoslavia by Tito, but refused to live in a Communist
country. He sent many of his works back to his home country, however, although
taking up permanent residence in the United States. He died in 1962 at the age
of 79.
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| The huge statue of Gregory of Nin, made by master sculptor Ivan Mestrovic in 1926, stands just outside one of the Palace gates. Gregory defended the local language against Latin and the Pope in 926 AD. |
We
ended our 10-day tour of Dalmatia by sitting overlooking the wharf in Split, a
busy port whose large ferry boats service the many islands in the vicinity. We wandered around the Palace one last time, noting
the curious juxtaposition of new buildings nestled in beside the ancient walls,
of washing hanging in front of elegant buildings, of the various boutique
shops, excellent restaurants and comfortable hotels now accommodated in this
ancient shell.
We
had expected the bus home to Dubrovnik to be crowded: but, as elsewhere, we are
almost the only passengers, once again. The journey home was memorable only
because a young woman approached me and said she knew me from Ottawa. The next
day we introduced her to the wonders of the Gaffe --- one of the three Irish
bars in Dubrovnik --- where a new owner has vastly improved the quality of the
food on offer. Like so many other young people, traditionally, she was
wandering around Europe, taking advantage of any good airline deal she could
find.
A good place to end this series of articles would be where I started,
with recognition of the ever-presence of the past when one travels in Europe.
Here is a transcript of a wall plaque we came across in Split, testifying to
the intense life lived in ancient times, in that very place on which we stood:
"Julius
Nepos (430-480) was a Western emperor (474-480). During the last stage of the
Western Roman Empire he reigned. At first, over Italy and adjoining areas held
by the Western Empire. As of 475 he had influence only over Dalmatia, having
been deposed and replaced with Romulus Augustus (in effect if not in law) in
the rest of the western remnant. The Eastern Roman Empire continued to
recognize Nepos as rightfull Western emperor to the end of his life. He was
murdered by his soldiers in Diocletian Palace on the April 25 of 480. Nepos was
therefore either the next to last or the last Western emperor depending on how
one looks at that matter."
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