Tam multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando (Virgil, Georgics, 1.449)

Najveći neprijatelji ratara i vinogradara u antici bili su uvijek isti: suša, tuča, oluje i skakavci. Jedina obrana bili su im magijske riječi i postupci. Antički izvori prenose cijeli niz različitih magijskih formula za obranu od tuče, sačuvanih u književnim izvorima i na filakterijima, kao i cijeli niz postupaka koje je trebalo obaviti da bi se vinograd ili polje obranili od nepogode. Svi se ti postupci mogu okarakterizirati kao magijski, zato jer nisu imali kauzalne povezanosti s nastankom i odvraćanjem tuče. S druge strane, prirodni filozofi ostavili su rasprave o tome što tuča jest i gdje nastaje i uglavnom se slažu s tim da tuča ima veze s mjesecom i da vjerojatno ondje nastaje.So thick the horrid hail bounds rattling on the roofs. It is summer, it is hot, the hail has ravaged the vineyards. Virgil’s line in the title of this paper not only vividly conveys the terrible feeling that the rattling of hailstones on the roof tiles excites among people – he calls it horrid grando – but is also brilliant Latin onomatopoeia. As long as there have been farmers and viticulturists, their enemies have always been the same; drought, hail, storm and locusts. Since antiquity these four woes have constantly been repeated in agricultural texts, in prayers, in magical formulae, all having a single aim: save my vineyard (olive grove, field, holding), whatever god, daimon or angel there might be. The peasant or landowner could fight against hail in two ways. The first was with words. We can find words against hail written in the form of magical formulae and prayers on various objects; there are inscriptions on stone, on terracotta plaques, little sheets of metal and on papyri. Secondly, with actions. These are various magical procedures for protection against hail. Help was sought from the gods, and from gifted individuals, like Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epimenides of Crete or Abaris the Hyperborean, of whom it was said that they could ward off bad weather. Scientific minds like Seneca or Pliny the Elder could not come to terms with this kind of magic and had no faith in the effectiveness of such formulae. Seneca mocked the customs in Cleona where there were special anti-hail guardians (khalazophylakes) who watched when hail-bearing clouds approached and when the peasants though that they would gain favour with the clouds with the blood of victims. The setting of philosopher and intellectual, of educated and well-read people, is one world, and that of peasant and grape-grower another very different one. People in the fields and vineyards were ready to do everything, pay anyone who could halt the catastrophe. Witnesses to such rural magic are the many phylacteries (white magic spells for protection against all evils) which frequently referred precisely to hail. A whole series of phylacteries – inscribed either in lead or in stone – have been preserved throughout the Roman Empire, and tell of this magic of the viticulturists. They invoked various celestial beings, archangels and angels (there are most of them in Late Antiquity, and most of them are Christians) to protect vineyards and farms from the activities of evil beings that bring the hail, such as for example the demon Tartaruc(h)us on a phylactery from Trogir (tabella plumbea Traguriensis). And in literary sources we have recommendations for procedures that should protect the vineyards, most of them preserved in the Byzantine Geoponica , compiled in the 10th century, in an Arabic text known as Nabataean Agriculture, and in earlier agricultural writers like Columella and Palladius. In these procedures, the sovereign substances are the skins of seals, hyenas, hippopotami, hedgehogs, live turtles, live venomous snakes, and objects such as pictures of snakes, of bunches of grapes, wooden figures of bulls or wooden crosses placed in the vineyards, iron mirrors and iron keys. In pagantimes the blood of sacrificed animals also worked, which was in Christian times replaced with symbols of blood like red rags; menstrual blood was also held to be sovereign. Hail could also be stopped by a lyre being played. There were various theories about what hail was and where it came from; the most frequent suggestions were that it was linked with the moon; in the satirist Lucian we find that on the Moon the vineyards bore bunches of ice-berries, and when the wind shook these vines, hail fell here below. Baron Münchhausen, drawing on Lucian, went to the Moon and repeated the story of the lunar ice vineyards, recommending that it would be useful, the next time the hail fell, to make lunar wine of this ice

Dijana izvan grada

Riječ je o poznatom reljefu iz Čitluka, koji je bio uklesan u živoj stijeni blizu gradskih vrata antičkog Ekvuma. Danas je u Zbirci Franjevačkog muzeja u Sinju, Arheološki odjel. Znakovito je mjesto gdje se reljef nalazio: blizu gradskih vrata, ali izvan grada, što je u rimskoj tradiciji mjesto koje s pravom pripada Dijani i Silvanu. Isto mjesto Dijana i Silvan zauzimaju i na Trajanovu slavoluku u Beneventu. S druge strane Silvan je prikazan potpuno prema domaćoj ikonografiji koja je preuzeta od grčkog Pana i po tome je ovaj par ujedno i domaći. Na njihovu se primjeru razmatra odnos antičkih ljudi prema kultiviranom i divljem pejsažu

Monuments to the goddess Diana from the Claudia Aequum colony and the Tilurium camp

U okolici Sinja, naročito na području kolonije Aequum i vojnoga logora Tilurium, pronađeno je više prikaza Dijane. Najviše ih je u liku božice lova, a česte su i posvete Dijani na natpisima gdje se spominje i kao Diana Augusta. Datacija i karakter tih spomenika mogu se povezati s političkim i društvenim zbivanjima u Carstvu od Hadrijana nadalje. Ta se zbivanja odražavaju u životu rimskih vojnika, veterana i građana sinjskogaSeveral portrayals of Diana have been discovered in the vicinity of Sinj, particularly in the area of the Aequum colony and the Tilurium military camp. Most take the form of the goddess hunting, and often there are also dedications to Diana in inscriptions, in which she is also referred to as Diana Augusta. The dating and character of these monuments may be associated with political and social events in the Empire from the reign of Hadrian onward. These events were reflected in the lives of Roman soldiers, veterans and citizens of the Sinj region who left behind these monuments

Oluja kod Girskih stijena i smrt Ajanta Malog

Myth has it that Ajax the Lesser (son of Oileus and also known as Locrian) was killed in a storm on the Gyraean Rocks. Scholars have been trying to locate the rocks ever since Classical Antiquity: from Euboea and Cape Caphareus across Andros and Tênos all the way to Myconos. Their location has remained unknown not so much because it was part of a mythical rather than real geography but rather because with time it has faded into oblivion. Ajax the Lesser was a "threshold creature", one of the figures that symbolises the crossing from this world into the otherworld, who later entered heroic epics as a "historical" hero who fought at Troy, known for his desecration and crimes for which the gods punished him by sending a storm against him as he returned from Troy.Mit nam kaže da je Ajant Mali (ili Oilejev ili Lokranin) poginuo u oluji na Girskim stijenama. Još od antike se pokušavalo locirati te stijene: od Eubeje i rta Kafereja, preko Andra i Tena, do Mikona. Njihovo mjesto nije bilo točno poznato više zbog toga što pripadaju mitološkoj, a ne stvarnoj geografiji, nego što bi bilo s vremenom zaboravljeno. Isto je tako i Ajant Mali porijeklom „biće s praga“, jedan od onih likova koji su označavali prijelaz iz ovoga u Onaj svijet, koji je kasnije došao u junačke epove kao „povijesni“ heroj koji se borio pod Trojom, poznat po bogohuljenju i zločinima zbog kojih su ga bogovi kaznili poslavši na njega oluju kad se vraćao iz Troje