Roman Britain in 1914 Part 2

(xxiii) _Lowbury._ During the early summer of 1914 Mr. D. Atkinson completed his examination of the interesting site of Lowbury, high amid the east Berkshire Downs. Of the results which he won in 1913 I gave some account last year (Report for 1913, p. 22); those of 1914 confirm and develop them. We may, then, accept the site as, at first and during the Middle Empire, a summer farm or herdsmen's shelter, and in the latest Roman days a refuge from invading English. Whether the wall which he traced round the little place was reared to keep in cattle or to keep out foes, is not clear; possibly enough, it served both uses. In all, Mr. Atkinson gathered about 850 coins belonging to all periods of the Empire but especially to the latest fourth century and including Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius. He also found over fifty brooches and a great amount of pottery--3 cwt., he tells me--which was mostly rough ware: there was little Samian (some of shape '37'), less Castor, and hardly any traces of mortaria. A notable find was the skeleton of a woman of 50 (ht. about 5 feet 9 inches), which he discovered in the trench dug to receive the foundations of the enclosing wall; it lay in the line of the foundations amidst the perished cement of the wall, and its a.s.sociations and position forbid us to think either that it was buried before the wall was thought of or was inserted after the wall was ruined. Mr. Atkinson formed the theory--with natural hesitation--that it might be a foundation burial, and I understand that Sir Jas. Frazer accepts this suggestion. A full report of the whole work will shortly be issued in the Reading College Research Series.

(xxiv) _Eastbourne, Beachy Head._ The Rev. W. Budgen, of Eastbourne, tells me of a h.o.a.rd of 540 coins found in 1914 in a coombe near Bullock Down, just behind Beachy Head. The coins range from Valerian (1 coin) to Quintillus (4 coins) and Probus (1 coin); 69 are attributed to Gallienus, 88 to Victorinus, 197 to the Tetrici, and 40 to Claudius Gothicus ; the h.o.a.rd may have been buried about A.D. 280, but it has to be added that 130 coins have not been yet identified. h.o.a.rds of somewhat this date are exceedingly common; in 1901 I published accounts of two such h.o.a.rds detected, shortly before that, at points quite close to the findspot of the present h.o.a.rd (see _Suss.e.x Archaeological Collections_, xliv, pp. 1-8).

Mr. Budgen has also sent me photographs of some early cinerary urns and a 'Gaulish' fibula, found together in Eastbourne in 1914. The things may belong to the middle of the first century A.D. The 'Gaulish'

type of fibula has been discussed and figured by Sir Arthur Evans (_Archaeologia_, lv. 188-9, fig. 10; see also Dressel's note in _Bonner Jahrbucher_, lxiv. 82). Its home appears to be Gaul. In Britain it occurs rather infrequently; east of the Rhine it is still rarer; it shows only one vestige of itself at Haltern and is wholly absent from Hofheim and the Saalburg. Its date appears to be the first century A.D., and perhaps rather the earlier two-thirds than the end of that period.

(xxv) _Parc-y-Meirch_ (_North Wales_). Here Mr. Willoughby Gardner has further continued his valuable excavations (Report for 1913, p. 25).

The new coin-finds seem to hint that the later fourth-century stratum may have been occupied earlier in that century than the date which I gave last year, A.D. 340. But the siege of this hill-fort is bound to be long and its full results will not be clear till the end. Then we may expect it to throw real light on an obscure corner of the history of Roman and also post-Roman Wales.

B. ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN BRITAIN IN 1914

This section includes the Roman inscriptions which have been found, or (perhaps I should say) first recognized to exist, in Britain in 1914 or which have become more accurately known in that year. As in 1913, the list is short and its items are not of great importance; but the Chesterholm altar (No. 5) deserves note, and the Corbridge tile also possesses considerable interest.

I have edited them in the usual manner, first stating the origin, character, &c., of the inscription, then giving its text with a rendering in English, thirdly adding any needful notes and acknowledging obligations to those who may have communicated the items to me.

In the expansions of the text, square brackets denote letters which, owing to breakage or other cause, are not now on the stone, though one may presume that they were originally there; round brackets denote expansions of Roman abbreviations. The inscriptions are printed in the same order as the finds in section A, that is, from north to south--though with so few items the order hardly matters.

(1) Found at Balmuildy (above, p. 7) in the annexe to the south-east of the fort proper, some sandstone fragments from the top of a small altar, originally perhaps about 14 inches wide. At the top, in a semicircular panel is a rude head; below are letters from the first two lines of the dedication; probably the first line had originally four letters:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15.]

Possibly DIO may be for _deo_. It is by no means a common orthography, but if it be accepted, we can read _dio [s(ancto) Ma]rti_.... The reading DIIO, _deo_, is I fear impossible.

I have to thank Mr. S. N. Miller, the excavator, for photographs.

(2) At Traprain Law (above, p. 8) a small potsherd from a second-century level bore the letters scratched on it

I R I /

These letters were on the side of the potsherd which had formed the inner surface when the pot was whole; they must therefore have been inscribed after the pot had been smashed, and the size and shape of the bit give cause to think that it may have been broken intentionally for inscription--possibly for use in some game. In any case, it must have been inscribed at Traprain Law, and not brought there already written, and the occurrence of writing of any sort on such a site is noteworthy.

I am indebted to Dr. G. Macdonald for a sight of the piece.

(3) Found about three and a half miles north of the Roman fort Bremenium, High Rochester, near Horsley in north Northumberland, beside the Roman road over the Cheviots (Dere Street), close to the steading of Featherwood, in the autumn of 1914, now in the porch of Horsley Parish Church, a plain altar 51 inches high by 22 inches wide, with six lines of letters 2 inches tall. The inscription is unusually illegible. Only the first and last lines are readable with certainty; elsewhere some letters can be read or guessed, but not so as to yield coherent sense.

VICTORIAE (only bottom of final E visible) ET....IVL (ET probable, IVL fairly certain) MEIANIC (only M quite certain) II........C (erased on purpose) PVBLICO V . S . L _m_

The altar was dedicated to Victory; nothing else is certain. It is tempting to conjecture in line 2 ET N AVG, _et numinibus Augustorum_, as on some other altars to Victory, but ET is not certain, though probable, and N AVG is definitely improbable. The fourth line seems to have been intentionally erased. I find no sign of any mention of the Cohors I Vardullorum, which garrisoned Bremenium, though it or its commander might naturally be concerned in putting up such an altar.

We may a.s.sume that the altar belongs to Bremenium; possibly it was brought thence when Featherwood was built.

I have to thank the Rev. Thos. Stephens, vicar of Horsley, for photographs and an excellent squeeze and readings, and Mr. R. Blair for a photograph.

(4-5) Found on July 17, 1914, at Chesterholm, just south of Hadrian's Wall, lying immediately underneath the surface in a gra.s.s field 120 yards west of the fort, two altars:

(4) 32 inches tall, 15 inches broad, illegible save for the first line

IOM

_I(ovi) o(ptimo) m(aximo)_....

(5) 34 inches tall, 22 inches broad, with 8 lines of rather irregular letters, not quite legible at the end (fig. 16).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16. ALTAR FROM CHESTERHOLM]

_Pro domu divina et numinibus Augustorum, Volcano sacrum, vicani Vindolandesses, cu[r(am)] agente ... v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito)_.

'For the Divine (i.e. Imperial) House and the Divinity of the Emperors, dedicated to Vulcan by the members of the _vicus_ of Vindolanda, under the care of ... (name illegible).'

The statement of the reason for the dedication given in the first three lines is strictly tautologous, the Divine House and the Divinity of the Emperors being practically the same thing. The formula _numinibus Aug._ is very common in Britain, though somewhat rare elsewhere; in other provinces its place is supplied by the formula _in honorem domus divinae_; it belongs mostly to the late second and third centuries. The plural _Augustorum_ does not appear to refer to a plurality of reigning Emperors, but to the whole body of Emperors dead and living who were worshipped in the Cult of the Emperors.

The _vicani Vindolandesses_ are the members of the settlement--women and children, traders, old soldiers, and others--which grew up outside the fort at Chesterholm, as outside nearly all Roman forts and fortresses.

In this case they formed a small self-governing community, presumably with its own 'parish council', which could be called by the Roman term _vicus_, even if it was not all that a proper _vicus_ should be. This altar was put up at the vote of their 'parish meeting' and paid for, one imagines, out of their common funds. The term _vicus_ is applied to similar settlements outside forts on the German Limes; thus we have the _vicani Murrenses_ at the fort of Benningen on the Murr (CIL. xiii.

6454) and the _vicus Aurelius_ or _Aurelia.n.u.s_ at Oehringen (_ibid._ 6541).

_Vindolandesses_, which is merely a phonetic spelling or misspelling of _Vindolandenses_, gives the correct name of the fort. In the Not.i.tia it is spelt Vindolana, in the Ravennas (431. 11) Vindolanda; and as in general the Ravennas teems with errors and the Not.i.tia is fairly correct, the spelling Vindolana has always been preferred, although (as Prof. Sir John Rhys tells me) its second part _-lana_ is an etymological puzzle. It now appears that in this, as in some few other cases, the Ravennas has kept the true tradition. The termination _-landa_ is a Celtic word denoting a small defined s.p.a.ce, akin to the Welsh 'llan', and also to the English 'land'; I cannot, however, find any other example in which it forms part of a place-name of Roman date. _Vindo-_ is connected either with the adjective _vindos_, 'white', or with the personal name Vindos derived from that adjective.

I have to thank Mrs. Clayton, the owner of Chesterholm, and her foreman, Mr. T. Hepple, for excellent photographs and squeezes. The altars are now in the Chesters Museum.

(6) Found at Corbridge, in August 1914, fragment of a tile, 7 8 inches in size, on which, before it was baked hard, some one had scratched three lines of lettering about 1-1-1/2 inches tall; the surviving letters form the beginnings of the lines of which the ends are broken off. There were never more than three lines, apparently.

O M Q L LIIND/ LEGEFEL

The inscription seems to have been a reading lesson. First the teacher scratched two lines of letters, in no particular order and making no particular sense; then he added the exhortation _lege feliciter_, 'read and good luck to you'. A modern teacher, even though he taught by the aid of a slate in lieu of a soft tile, might have expressed himself less gracefully. The tile may be compared with the well-known tile from Silchester, on which Maunde Thompson detected a writing lesson (Eph.

Epigr. ix. 1293). A knowledge of reading and writing does not seem to have been at all uncommon in Roman Britain or in the Roman world generally, even among the working cla.s.ses; I may refer to my _Romanization of Roman Britain_ (ed. 3, pp. 29-34).

The imperfectly preserved letter after Q in line 1 was perhaps an angular L or E; that after D, in line 2, may have been M or N or even A.

I am indebted to Mr. R. H. Forster for a photograph and squeeze of the tile.

(7) Found in a peat-bog in Upper Weardale, in August 1913, two bronze skillets or 'paterae', of the usual saucepan shape, the larger weighing 15-1/2 oz., the smaller 8-1/2 oz. Each bore a stamp on the handle; the smaller had also a graffito on the rim of the bottom made by a succession of little dots. An uninscribed bronze ladle was found with the 'paterae':

(_a_) on the larger patera: P CIPE POLI

(_b_) on the smaller: _p_OLYBII