Emily is a seasoned traveler. She’s been to astonishing places, and she’s one of those people who truly takes everything in stride. At Volubilis, she said, “I’m having one of those moments where I wonder how this can possibly be my life.”
I completely understood what she meant. I’ve been to Roman ruins before, in the UK, but that experience requires significant imagination. I mean, I’ve been to Hadrian’s Wall, and, at least in the section I saw…it is a lil stone wall. Kind of cute, but you have to take someone’s word that it was built by the Roman Empire. Volubilis is a whole city. Walls waist-high, with clear doors, courtyards, vestibules, public and private spaces. I could much more vividly imagine the lives I’ve read so much about.
Let me back up—Volubilis is a Roman town that once was home to 20,000 people. After Rome fell, people left the city, bit by bit. For a time in the late 8th century, it was actually the capital city of Morocco. It was ultimately abandoned in the 11th century when the capital shifted to Fes. In 1755, when an earthquake devastated Lisbon, it also took out what was left of Volubilis. Randomly, just a few years earlier, a British ambassador had been there and had made many drawings of what he saw. In the early 20th century, French archaeologists began excavating the site and reconstructed significant sections, including the triumphal arch, part of the arcade on the main road, and part of the temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
After the capital moved to Fes, Hmad told us, Moroccans avoided this area completely. They were offended by the graphic mosaics, and referred to the place as “Sin City.” The ruins were eventually mostly covered by dirt and plants. Emily asked what people thought this place was, during the couple hundred years between the government leaving Volubilis and the French beginning to excavate. The guide we met there said that people called it “The Palace of the Pharoah,” since the only comparable thing many of them had seen was in Egypt, which they passed through during the hajj.
The mosaics were indeed quite graphic—and also my favorite part. They were so vivid, and I could recognize the figures they depicted before the guide interpreted them for us: Diana getting spied on in the tub, nymphs capturing Hylas, Bacchus seducing Ariadne. The artists’ work remained, even when the city was mostly rubble.
Imagining a city that was an important regional center two thousand years ago, now ruins, much of it still unexcavated, was humbling. All of the adults were nearly speechless as we moved through this space, down roads that were still clearly marked in the land. I hope that it made the ancient world more real to the children, although they weren’t as bowled over as we were. I agreed with Emily; this was one of many moments that made me feel like, “How can this possibly be my life?”
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