I'd been looking forward to the last talk of the afternoon. Miranda Aldhouse-Green is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University, and under the name Miranda Green she's written books about Celtic Gods and Goddesses. I've got the one on Celtic Goddesses, and it's very good.
The title of the talk was Silent Gods? Spirits and the Sacred in Roman Britain.
She began with what Roman people thought of Britain - and even in the 3rdC AD, when Roman Britain had roads and cities and villas and every aspect of civilised life, Roman writers were claiming that the island was a swampy forest full of half naked savages!
There have been some interesting finds recently, though, which give us more of an insight into Celtic religion of the time. She mentioned the Le Cottilon hoard in Jersey, for instance, a solid lump of coins, gold torcs and silver jewellery - which was probably not just buried as a sort of bank, for safe keeping, but had a religious meaning. One of the pieces in the collection was an antique even to the people who buried the treasure - a Bronze Age spear head.
She also mentioned a bronze figure which had been found at Culver Hole in Gower, which may have been a moon goddess.
Something really exciting turned up at Chartres in 2005, though - an underground Roman shrine which included four incense burners, one for each of the four directions. Here there's no doubt about the Celtic nature of the worship, because the incense burners are marked with the word "Dru", meaning druid.
There's a theory that the owner of the shrine was consciously re-creating a pre-Roman belief system which was no longer being used. Also, the druid priests of the past may have been converted, in this re-creation, from human priests into spirits which could be worshipped.
Then we got something to be passed round the audience - replicas of "spoons" which often turn up in a religious context. They have no handle as such, apart from a bit at the top of the spoon bowl to hold it, and they always come in pairs, one of which has a raised cross on the bowl and the other has a small hole, off centre. The idea is that these are tools for divination, by which some sort of powder is blown down a straw through the hole, making patterns on the other spoon with the cross, as they are held together.
The head has always been important in Celtic myth, so it was interesting to discover that when Boudica attacked the Temple of Claudius in Colchester, they cut off the head of the statue of Claudius which stood outside and threw it in the river!
At Uley, in Gloucestershire, there was a Temple to Mercury - and the head of the statue of Mercury was buried when the shrine became Christianised. The statues of Mercury in Britain tend to have horns on their heads rather than the more classical wings. Uley is also one of the places where curse tablets can be found - curses inscribed into lead, mostly invoking horrible fates on people who have stolen the curser's property.
Meanwhile at Lydney Temple there seems to have been a special association with dogs - several figurines have been found there. Lydney was the Temple of Nodens, a god of healing, and overlooked the River Severn where there was a good view of the Severn bore.
Roman towns were laid out in the same way across the Empire, and one of the reasons for this was to allow "perambulations" between the most important buildings, something that an important Roman would do regularly to see and be seen.
Then we were off to Hadrian's Wall, where Roman and Celtic gods were being worshipped together. For instance there's an altar to Jupiter (Best and Greatest) at Maryport fort on the Wall, which was the official altar of the legion, but on the back is a carving of a wheel, symbol of a Celtic god who was obviously important to the troops stationed there.
Also at Hadrian's Wall was a temple to a god unknown anywhere else, Antenociticus, who is presumed to be a local deity, but was important enough to the builder of the temple to have a life sized statue.
Even further north, at the Antonine Wall, there was a Temple of Mithras I hadn't heard about before. It also had a mask of Sol with cut out mouth (so the priest could speak through it) and cut out rays around the head, so a light source behind the mask would make it look much more impressive.
Going back to Boudica - there's a tombstone in Corinium/Cirencester to a woman called Bodicacia.
And finally (the talk had over run a little because of problems with the slides earlier) at Bewcastle Roman Fort, again on Hadrian's Wall, there are five altars dedicated to the Germanic god Cocidius, and one dedicated to an amalgam god, Mars Cocidius. The Romans saw nothing wrong or strange about mixing their gods together and creating something new.
Showing posts with label Roman history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roman history. Show all posts
Monday, 18 March 2019
Thursday, 1 November 2018
Chester - St John's Church
Just by the Roman amphitheatre is a church which claims to be the original cathedral for Chester, built somewhere in the 4thC (or possibly even earlier!), and later being rebuilt in stone to become the Saxon minster for Chester. At that time, the amphitheatre was being used as some sort of fortified residence, with buildings in the arena and most of the entrances blocked up. It is, of course, outside the City walls.
These are some of the ruins at the east end - I was too early to go inside the church, which opens at 10am. The church was reduced in size at the Reformation, and this bit was converted into Tudor flats! Now the churchyard is home to these cute little things:
I'm sure they were posing for me!
I then crossed the amphitheatre again to get to the Roman garden, which runs along the outside of the City Wall, and is full of columns found in the City, as well as more recent mosaics, and a replica hypocaust.
I didn't expect to find some Civil War history there as well - there's a portion of wall in the picture which has been rebuilt, after being breached by the Parliamentary forces, who set up their cannons at St Johns. There's a plaque at the base of the wall to remember the dead of both sides, set up by the Sealed Knot.
The Roman garden leads down to the river:
It must have been somewhere close to here that my grandad hired a rowing boat to take my gran out on the river, not long after they got married. They'd come down on the train from Manchester for day trips - it must have been 1937 or 38.
These are some of the ruins at the east end - I was too early to go inside the church, which opens at 10am. The church was reduced in size at the Reformation, and this bit was converted into Tudor flats! Now the churchyard is home to these cute little things:
I'm sure they were posing for me!
I then crossed the amphitheatre again to get to the Roman garden, which runs along the outside of the City Wall, and is full of columns found in the City, as well as more recent mosaics, and a replica hypocaust.
I didn't expect to find some Civil War history there as well - there's a portion of wall in the picture which has been rebuilt, after being breached by the Parliamentary forces, who set up their cannons at St Johns. There's a plaque at the base of the wall to remember the dead of both sides, set up by the Sealed Knot.
The Roman garden leads down to the river:
It must have been somewhere close to here that my grandad hired a rowing boat to take my gran out on the river, not long after they got married. They'd come down on the train from Manchester for day trips - it must have been 1937 or 38.
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
At Leisure in Chester
It's a long time since I've been to Chester, so I was glad to have a half day to explore before I went home from FantasyCon. I was able to leave my suitcase at the hotel, which was a blessing - it was full of books and a lot heavier than when I'd arrived!
This amused me, at the Westminster Hotel right by the Belgrave Hotel.
A short walk up City Road, and there was this view:
And a little further on, a nice example of late nineteenth century social housing:
Then the familiar sight of the Eastgate Clock:
I was heading to the Roman amphitheatre, which I remembered when the building next door, which covers half the site, was still a girls' school. I was sad to see that the building is now derelict. The amphitheatre itself has been improved though:
There's still only half the amphitheatre visible, but now there's a walkway across the semicircle, with a public space beyond it, where I found this model:
There's been a major dig since I last visited, with new walkways put in, and the positions of the original seating marked out in wood, and with rebuilt walls. The altar to Nemesis in a small room just off the arena is also a replica - I think the original is in the Grosvenor Museum:
This amused me, at the Westminster Hotel right by the Belgrave Hotel.
A short walk up City Road, and there was this view:
And a little further on, a nice example of late nineteenth century social housing:
Then the familiar sight of the Eastgate Clock:
I was heading to the Roman amphitheatre, which I remembered when the building next door, which covers half the site, was still a girls' school. I was sad to see that the building is now derelict. The amphitheatre itself has been improved though:
There's still only half the amphitheatre visible, but now there's a walkway across the semicircle, with a public space beyond it, where I found this model:
There's been a major dig since I last visited, with new walkways put in, and the positions of the original seating marked out in wood, and with rebuilt walls. The altar to Nemesis in a small room just off the arena is also a replica - I think the original is in the Grosvenor Museum:
Saturday, 1 September 2018
The London Mithraeum
This was the highlight of the week!
Back in the 1950s, an excavation of a bomb site unearthed a Roman temple that had people queuing round the block to see it. It was only near the end of the dig that the archaeologists found the conclusive evidence that it was a Temple of Mithras.
The Temple was reconstructed nearby, and so things remained for many years.
Then a company called Bloomberg acquired the site to build a new office block, and they offered to put the Temple back in its original position as part of the rebuilding work. As the Temple was discovered 7 metres under the present ground level, this was not as easy as it sounds. Also, some of the Temple was discovered to be still in situ, so the reconstruction is actually slightly to the west.
They have done a magnificent job, in consultation with a team from the Museum of London. They also conducted an archaeological dig of their own, between 2010 and 2014, discovering many artefacts that are usually not preserved, but survived here because of the marshy nature of the ground.
And all this is open to the public for free (except on Mondays). When the Temple first opened, it was necessary to book, but now you can just turn up, and friendly staff are there to help you.
The top layer has a display of architecture, and beyond that a cabinet of finds from the site beneath our feet. Anyone who wanted could look at a touch-screen device to show what the artefacts were, but I always feel this is cheating slightly. So we lingered by the writing tablets, and sandals, and the merchant's scales, and the piece of door (!) and the pottery for a while, and then we went down the stairs to the next level (there's a lift, too, I think). The black marble walls are inscribed with the ground levels over the centuries, such as at the time of the Great Fire (which destroyed everything above), and the date (1505) that Thomas More moved into a house on this site.
The room downstairs is dim, with pictures being projected on the walls along with a commentary spoken by Joanna Lumley. There are also three plinths, each with information about the cult of Mithras, the Temple itself, and the head of Mithras that was found in 1954. You have to wait here for a little while (and there are also seats) because visitors are only let into the Mithraeum itself every 20 minutes.
I knew some of the information, but was surprised by the strong links between the cult of Mithras and astrology.
And then, the Mithraeum itself.
There is a sound and light show which is very effective, with voices speaking Latin and mist. Then the lights go up and you can examine the ruins more closely. There's a walkway right around the outside, and also over the part of the Temple nearest the door. There's a central aisle, with 7 pillars down each side, and between the pillars and the walls a narrower space where the congregation sat. At the top end there's a Perspex copy of the altar slab, showing Mithras slaying the bull (or at least waving a dagger around in the general area of the bull's throat - opinion is divided about whether he's actually killing it or not).
There's also a square well in one corner.
No-one is really sure what went on in the Temple, because it was a mystery cult, and nothing was written down - but we do know it was all-male, and popular with soldiers. The temples that have been discovered are also rather too small to get a bull inside, so there probably wasn't any ritual sacrifice involved in the worship. The London Mithraeum is actually larger than average - about 100 temples have been discovered across the Roman Empire. This one is also oriented towards the East, like a Christian church.
It was a ridiculously exciting experience for me. I first found out about Mithras when I read The Eagle of the Ninth, aged 12. Rosemary Sutcliff would have been drawing on recent news stories to write the scenes inside the temple. So along with my archaeological knowledge, I was sitting in the dark with Marcus Flavius Aquila, in his Raven mask, in the flickering torch light.
Back in the 1950s, an excavation of a bomb site unearthed a Roman temple that had people queuing round the block to see it. It was only near the end of the dig that the archaeologists found the conclusive evidence that it was a Temple of Mithras.
The Temple was reconstructed nearby, and so things remained for many years.
Then a company called Bloomberg acquired the site to build a new office block, and they offered to put the Temple back in its original position as part of the rebuilding work. As the Temple was discovered 7 metres under the present ground level, this was not as easy as it sounds. Also, some of the Temple was discovered to be still in situ, so the reconstruction is actually slightly to the west.
They have done a magnificent job, in consultation with a team from the Museum of London. They also conducted an archaeological dig of their own, between 2010 and 2014, discovering many artefacts that are usually not preserved, but survived here because of the marshy nature of the ground.
And all this is open to the public for free (except on Mondays). When the Temple first opened, it was necessary to book, but now you can just turn up, and friendly staff are there to help you.
The top layer has a display of architecture, and beyond that a cabinet of finds from the site beneath our feet. Anyone who wanted could look at a touch-screen device to show what the artefacts were, but I always feel this is cheating slightly. So we lingered by the writing tablets, and sandals, and the merchant's scales, and the piece of door (!) and the pottery for a while, and then we went down the stairs to the next level (there's a lift, too, I think). The black marble walls are inscribed with the ground levels over the centuries, such as at the time of the Great Fire (which destroyed everything above), and the date (1505) that Thomas More moved into a house on this site.
The room downstairs is dim, with pictures being projected on the walls along with a commentary spoken by Joanna Lumley. There are also three plinths, each with information about the cult of Mithras, the Temple itself, and the head of Mithras that was found in 1954. You have to wait here for a little while (and there are also seats) because visitors are only let into the Mithraeum itself every 20 minutes.
I knew some of the information, but was surprised by the strong links between the cult of Mithras and astrology.
And then, the Mithraeum itself.
There is a sound and light show which is very effective, with voices speaking Latin and mist. Then the lights go up and you can examine the ruins more closely. There's a walkway right around the outside, and also over the part of the Temple nearest the door. There's a central aisle, with 7 pillars down each side, and between the pillars and the walls a narrower space where the congregation sat. At the top end there's a Perspex copy of the altar slab, showing Mithras slaying the bull (or at least waving a dagger around in the general area of the bull's throat - opinion is divided about whether he's actually killing it or not).
There's also a square well in one corner.
No-one is really sure what went on in the Temple, because it was a mystery cult, and nothing was written down - but we do know it was all-male, and popular with soldiers. The temples that have been discovered are also rather too small to get a bull inside, so there probably wasn't any ritual sacrifice involved in the worship. The London Mithraeum is actually larger than average - about 100 temples have been discovered across the Roman Empire. This one is also oriented towards the East, like a Christian church.
It was a ridiculously exciting experience for me. I first found out about Mithras when I read The Eagle of the Ninth, aged 12. Rosemary Sutcliff would have been drawing on recent news stories to write the scenes inside the temple. So along with my archaeological knowledge, I was sitting in the dark with Marcus Flavius Aquila, in his Raven mask, in the flickering torch light.
Sunday, 28 January 2018
Eagle of the Ninth
As a child, I adored the work of Rosemary Sutcliff, and one of my favourites was the Eagle of the Ninth, telling the story of the Ninth Hispana Legion as it marched north into the mists of Caledonia and into legend.
At the time, the early 1950s, Rosemary Sutcliff was working from current archaeological research, by which the Ninth really had marched north and disappeared. Since then, traces of the Legion have been found at a later date, elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but when she was writing it really did seem that they had vanished into the mists.
And the other inspiration for her story was archaeological work at Silchester, where a Roman eagle statue had been found hidden in the hypocaust of a villa there. You can still see the Silchester eagle, at the Museum of Reading, though now it seems that it may have been part of a statue in the town, and not a legionary eagle after all.
In 2011 a film was made of the book, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, and though Donald Sutherland was perfect as Uncle Aquila, the plot of the film left out about half the book, jettisoning Cottia (the girl next door), Cub (the wolf cub), and Marcus's disguise as the oculist Demetrius of Alexandria completely. And they changed the ending.
In 1977, though, BBC Scotland made the story into a series. I loved the series when it was first shown, starring Anthony Higgins as Marcus and Christian Rodska as Esca, so I was delighted when I learned that it was now available on DVD, from Simply Media - and a little apprehensive. Would it be as good as I remembered?
They obviously had a tiny budget, but they did have the advantage of the rolling Scottish hills to film in, which gave it that epic scope. The director also managed to film battle sequences quite cleverly using overlaying images and only about a dozen extras.
It's a difficult book to make a story of, with a lot of the action in flashback as the story of what happened to the Ninth is told by a Roman and a Caledonian tribesman, and towards the beginning of the book, Marcus spends months recuperating from his wound at his uncle's house with not a lot happening. They manage to fit the story into six episodes quite satisfactorily, though.
I was very happy. They got it right.
At the time, the early 1950s, Rosemary Sutcliff was working from current archaeological research, by which the Ninth really had marched north and disappeared. Since then, traces of the Legion have been found at a later date, elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but when she was writing it really did seem that they had vanished into the mists.
And the other inspiration for her story was archaeological work at Silchester, where a Roman eagle statue had been found hidden in the hypocaust of a villa there. You can still see the Silchester eagle, at the Museum of Reading, though now it seems that it may have been part of a statue in the town, and not a legionary eagle after all.
In 2011 a film was made of the book, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, and though Donald Sutherland was perfect as Uncle Aquila, the plot of the film left out about half the book, jettisoning Cottia (the girl next door), Cub (the wolf cub), and Marcus's disguise as the oculist Demetrius of Alexandria completely. And they changed the ending.
In 1977, though, BBC Scotland made the story into a series. I loved the series when it was first shown, starring Anthony Higgins as Marcus and Christian Rodska as Esca, so I was delighted when I learned that it was now available on DVD, from Simply Media - and a little apprehensive. Would it be as good as I remembered?
They obviously had a tiny budget, but they did have the advantage of the rolling Scottish hills to film in, which gave it that epic scope. The director also managed to film battle sequences quite cleverly using overlaying images and only about a dozen extras.
It's a difficult book to make a story of, with a lot of the action in flashback as the story of what happened to the Ninth is told by a Roman and a Caledonian tribesman, and towards the beginning of the book, Marcus spends months recuperating from his wound at his uncle's house with not a lot happening. They manage to fit the story into six episodes quite satisfactorily, though.
I was very happy. They got it right.
Saturday, 31 August 2013
Badger God
Badger culling is in the news. Despite scientific evidence that culling will not work to prevent TB in cattle, and the opposition of wildlife trusts and the RSPCA, the government is pressing ahead with the support of the National Farmers Union.
Volunteers are going out by night to protect the setts as far as they can, and it occurred to me that there really ought to be a god of badgers for Pagans to appeal to.
A little bit of Googling brought up something interesting.
There is indeed a Gaulish badger god - at least, if the translation of Moritasgus really is Great Badger. It might also be Sea Badger, or "masses of sea water". There was a Romano-Gaulish shrine to Apollo Moritasgus at a place called Alesia in present day Burgundy. The Romans often tagged the name of one of their own gods onto a local deity, and since Apollo and Moritasgus were both associated with healing, it seems apt. There was a healing spring at the shrine, and excavations have turned up offerings of model parts of the body, much as you'd find today at Lourdes or other Catholic healing shrines. Alesia is nowhere near the sea, though, which makes me tend to favour the Badger translation of the name.
And then it gets even better, because Moritasgus's consort goddess is Damona - the Divine Cow.
Alesia became even more interesting when I dug a little further, too. It wasn't just the site of a healing shrine. Anyone who's read Asterix will be familiar with the name of the great Gaulish hero Vercingetorix. Alesia is the place where Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix in battle, and conquered Gaul (except for that one little village where Asterix lived, of course). It was, in fact, a huge siege, with the Romans throwing up vast earthworks to cut off the Gauls from their re-enforcements, and traces of these earthworks have been picked up by aerial photography There's a statue of Vercingetorix there now.
So here's to Moritasgus, the Great Healing Badger, and his consort Damona the Divine Cow, and to the volunteers who are going out to protect the badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire.
FAQs about the cull can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22614350
Volunteers are going out by night to protect the setts as far as they can, and it occurred to me that there really ought to be a god of badgers for Pagans to appeal to.
A little bit of Googling brought up something interesting.
There is indeed a Gaulish badger god - at least, if the translation of Moritasgus really is Great Badger. It might also be Sea Badger, or "masses of sea water". There was a Romano-Gaulish shrine to Apollo Moritasgus at a place called Alesia in present day Burgundy. The Romans often tagged the name of one of their own gods onto a local deity, and since Apollo and Moritasgus were both associated with healing, it seems apt. There was a healing spring at the shrine, and excavations have turned up offerings of model parts of the body, much as you'd find today at Lourdes or other Catholic healing shrines. Alesia is nowhere near the sea, though, which makes me tend to favour the Badger translation of the name.
And then it gets even better, because Moritasgus's consort goddess is Damona - the Divine Cow.
Alesia became even more interesting when I dug a little further, too. It wasn't just the site of a healing shrine. Anyone who's read Asterix will be familiar with the name of the great Gaulish hero Vercingetorix. Alesia is the place where Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix in battle, and conquered Gaul (except for that one little village where Asterix lived, of course). It was, in fact, a huge siege, with the Romans throwing up vast earthworks to cut off the Gauls from their re-enforcements, and traces of these earthworks have been picked up by aerial photography There's a statue of Vercingetorix there now.
So here's to Moritasgus, the Great Healing Badger, and his consort Damona the Divine Cow, and to the volunteers who are going out to protect the badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire.
FAQs about the cull can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22614350
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)