Roman Britain in 1914 Part 5

_Lancashire_

(19) In the _Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society_ (x.x.xi. 69-87) Mr. W. Harrison discusses the Roman road which runs from Ribchester to Overborough for twenty-seven lonely miles through the hills of north-east Lancashire. He does not profess to add to our knowledge of the line of the road; he directs attention rather to the reasons for the course which the road pursues, its diversions from the straight line, and its gradients. He notes also, as others have noted, the absence of any intermediate fort half-way along the twenty-seven miles. Probably there was such a fort; but it must have stood in the wildest part of the road, almost in the heart of the Forest of Bowland and perhaps somewhere in Croasdale, and it has never been detected. The greater ease of the lowland route from Ribchester by Lancaster to Overborough may have led to the early abandonment of the shorter mountain track and of any post which guarded its central portion. That, at any rate, is the suggestion which I would offer to Lancashire antiquaries as a working hypothesis.

(20) In the same journal Mr. J. W. Jackson lists some animal remains found among the Roman remains of Manchester (pp. 113-18).

_Lincolnshire_

(21) Samian fragments, mostly of the second century but including shape '29', found in making new streets and sewers in Lincoln, are noted in _Lincolnshire Notes and Queries_, xiii. 1-4.

(22) In south Lincolnshire, between Ulceby and Dexthorpe, chance excavation has revealed tiles, potsherds, iron nails, and a few late coins (Victorinus-Constantine junior, n.o.b. caes.) on a site which has previously yielded Roman sc.r.a.ps (_ibid._, p. 34). The tiles point to some sort of farm or other dwelling.

_London_

(23) In his new volume _London_ (London, 1914) Sir L. Gomme continues his efforts to prove that English London can trace direct and uninterrupted descent from Roman Londinium. Though, he says (p. 9), 'Roman civilization certainly ceased in Britain with the Anglo-Saxon conquest, ... amidst the wreckage London was able to continue its use of the Roman city const.i.tution in its new position as an English city'.

I can only record my conviction that not all his generous enthusiasm provides proof that Roman London survived the coming of the English.

The root-error in his arguments is perhaps a failure to realize the Roman side of the argument. He says, for instance, that, though not a 'colonia', Londinium had the rank of 'municipium civium Romanorum'.

There is not the least reason to think that it was a 'municipium'.

So again, his references to a 'botontinus' on Hampstead Heath (p. 86), to the 'jurisdictional terminus' of Roman London at Mile End (p. 95), to its 'pomerium' (p. 98), its right of forming commercial alliances with other cities, which 'lasted into the Middle Ages and is a direct survival of the system adopted in Roman towns' (p. 101), its position as a 'city-state' and its relation to the choice of Emperors (pp. 105, 130)--all this has nothing to do with the real Londinium; these things did not exist in the Roman town. When Sir Laurence goes on to a.s.sert that 'the ritual of St. Paul's down to the seventeenth century preserved the actual rites of the worship of Diana', he again falls short of proof. What part of the ritual and what rites of Diana?[10]

[Footnote 10: Sir Laurence alludes (p. 77) to a Caerwent inscription as unpublished. It has probably appeared in print a dozen times; I have had the misfortune to publish it three times over myself. Its meaning is not quite correctly stated on p. 77.]

(24) In the December number of the _Journal of the British Archaeological a.s.sociation_ (xx. 307) Mr. F. Lambert, of the Guildhall Museum, prints pertinent criticisms of Sir L. Gomme's volume, much in the direction of my preceding paragraphs. He also makes useful observations on Roman London. In particular, he attacks the difficult problem of the date when its town-walls were built. Here he agrees with those who ascribe them to the second century, and for two main reasons.

First, he thinks that the occurrence of early Roman potsherds at certain points near the walls proves the town to have grown to its full extent by about A.D. 100. Secondly, he points to the foundations of the Roman gate at Newgate; as they are shallower than those of the adjacent town-walls, he dates the gate after the walls and thus obtains (as he hopes) an early date for the walls. Both points were worth raising, but I doubt if either proves Mr. Lambert's case. For (_a_) the potsherds come mostly from groups of rubbish-pits--such as those which Mr.

Lambert himself has lately done good work in helping to explore--and rubbish-pits, especially in groups, lie rather outside the inhabited areas of towns. Those of London itself suggest to me that the place had _not_ reached its full area by A.D. 100 (see above, p. 23). (_b_) The Newgate foundations are harder to unravel. As a rule, Roman town-gates had large super-structures and needed stronger foundations than the town-walls. At Newgate, where the superstructure must have been comparatively slender, the published plans show that under a part, at least, of the gate-towers the undisturbed subsoil rises higher than beneath the adjacent town-walls. According to the elevation published by Dr. Norman and Mr. F. W. Reader in _Archaeologia_ lxiii, plate lvii, the wall-builders at this point stopped their deep foundation trenches for the full width of the gateway (98 feet), or at least dug them shallower there. No motive for such action could be conceived except the wish to leave a pa.s.sage for a gate. There would seem, therefore, to have been an entrance into Roman London at Newgate as early as the building of the walls, and there may have been such an entrance even before the erection of these walls. Dr. Norman has, however, warned me that plate lvii goes much beyond the actual evidence (see plate lvi); practically, we do not know enough to form conjectures of any value on this point.

(25) In the _Journal of the Royal Inst.i.tute of British Architects_ for April 11, 1914 (xxi. 333), Mr. W. R. Davidge prints a lecture on the Development of London which deals mostly with present and future London but also contains a new theory as to the Roman town. Hitherto, most writers have agreed that, while Londinium may have been laid out on a regular town-plan, no discoverable trace of such plan survived, nor could any existing street be said to run to any serious extent on Roman lines. Mr. Davidge devises a rectangular plan of oblong blocks, and finds vestiges of Roman streets in the present Cheapside, Cannon Street, Gracechurch Street, and Birchin Lane. In a later number of the same journal (Aug. 29, p. 52) I have given some reasons for not accepting this view. First, Mr. Davidge's list of four survivals would be too brief to prove much if the survivals were proved. Secondly, Roman structural remains seem to have been found under all the streets in question, and it is, therefore, plain that they do not run on the lines of Roman thoroughfares. Thirdly, his suggested plan brings none of his conjectured Roman streets (except one) to any of the various known gates of Londinium; it requires us to a.s.sume a number of other gates for which there is neither probability nor proof.

(26) In the Post Office Magazine, _St. Martin's-le-Grand_ (Jan. and July 1914), Mr. Thos. Wilson, then Clerk of the Works, gives details, with ill.u.s.trations, of the Roman rubbish-pits lately excavated at the General Post Office (see above, p. 23).

_Norfolk_

(27) In the earlier pages (1-45) of his _Roman Camp at Burgh Castle_ (London, 1913) Mr. L. H. Dahl deals with the Roman fort at Burgh Castle (Gariannonum), near Yarmouth, which formed part of the fourth-century _Litus Saxonic.u.m_. His account, which is not very technical, seems based on previous writers, Ives, Harrod, Fox. I note a list of thirty coins which, save for an uncertain specimen of Domitian and one of Marcus, belong entirely to the late third and the fourth centuries, and end with two silver of Honorius (_Virtus Romanorum_, Cohen 59). He detects a Roman road running east from Burgh Castle towards Gorleston, preserved (he thinks) in an old road sometimes called the Jews' Way; this, however, seems unlikely. He also maintains the view, which others have held, that the fort had no defences towards the water. This again seems unlikely. Burgh Castle, like Richborough, Stutfall, and other forts of the _Litus_, may well have had different arrangements on its water-front from the walls on its other three faces. But it cannot have lacked defences, and excavations prove, here as elsewhere, that walls did actually exist on this side.

_Northumberland: Corbridge_

(28) A paper by the present writer and Prof. P. Gardner, ent.i.tled 'Roman silver in Northumberland' (_Journal of Roman Studies_, iv.

1-12), discusses the relics of what was seemingly a h.o.a.rd--or perhaps a service--of Roman silver plate, lost in the Tyne or on its banks near Corbridge in the fourth century. Of five pieces, four were picked up between 1731 and 1736, about 100-150 yards below the present bridge at Corbridge; a fifth was found in 1760 floating in the stream four miles lower down. One was a silver 'basin', of which no more is recorded.

Another was a small two-handled cup with figures of men and beasts round it. A third was a round flat-bottomed bowl, with a decorated rim bearing the Chi-Rho amidst its other ornament. A fourth was a small ovoid cup, 4 inches high, with the inscription _Desideri vivas_. Last, not least, is the Corbridge Lanx, the only surviving piece of the five, and probably the finest piece of Roman engraved silver found in these islands, an oblong dish measuring 15 19 inches, weighing 148 ounces, and ornamented with figures of deities from cla.s.sical mythology. That all five pieces belonged together can hardly be doubted, though it cannot be proved outright. That they all belong to the later Roman period, and probably to the fourth century, seems highly probable. Whether they were buried in the river-bank to conceal them from raiders or were lost from a boat or otherwise, is not now discoverable. But the occurrence of such silver close to the Roman Wall is in itself notable. It is to be attributed rather to a Roman officer residing in or pa.s.sing through Corbridge than to either a Romanized Briton or a Pictish looter.

Apart from its findspot, the Lanx is important for its excellent art and for the place which it seems to hold in the history of later Greek art.

It is, of course, not Romano-British work; it is purely Greek in all its details and no doubt of Greek workmanship. The deities figured on it have long been a puzzle. They are evidently cla.s.sical deities; three of them, indeed, are Apollo, Artemis, and Athena. But the ident.i.ty of the other two figures and the meaning of the whole scene have been much disputed. Roger Gale, the first to attempt its unravelment, suggested in 1735 that it was 'just an a.s.semblage of deities', and at one time I inclined to this view--that we had here merely (let us say) a tea-party at Apollo's; Dr. Drexel, too, wrote to me lately to express the same idea. But I must confess that nearly all the best archaeologists demand a definite mythological identification, and my colleague, Prof. Gardner, suggests a new view--that the scene is the so-called Judgement of Paris. This mythological incident was often depicted in ancient art, and--strange as it may sound--in the later versions Paris was not seldom omitted, Apollo was made arbiter, and the scene was removed from Mount Ida to Delphi.[11] The two hitherto disputable figures are, Prof.

Gardner thinks, Hera (seated) and Aphrodite (standing, with a long sceptre). He ascribes the work to the third or early part of the fourth century, and believes that it was made in the Eastern Empire; from the prominence granted to Artemis, he conjectures that Ephesus may have been its origin. But he adds that he would not be sure that the artist of the piece, while copying a Judgement of Paris, was consciously aware of the meaning of the original before him. His views will be published in fuller detail in the _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_.

[Footnote 11: Compare the Roman provincial bas-reliefs of Actaeon surprising Diana, with Actaeon omitted (R. Cagnat, _Archaeological Journal_, lxiv. 42).]

I am glad, further, to have been able to ill.u.s.trate this paper by what I believe to be a better ill.u.s.tration of the Lanx than has been published before, and also to set out in more accurate fashion the curious legal history of the object after it was found.

(29) In the new _History of Northumberland_, issued by the Northumberland County History Committee in vol. x (edited by Mr. H. H. Craster, Newcastle, 1914, pp. 455-522) I have given a long account of the known Roman remains in Corbridge parish. These are the settlement of Corstopitum, a small stretch of Roman road and another of the Roman Wall, and the fort of Halton (Hunnum) on the Wall. The account is necessarily historical rather than archaeological; it tries to sum up the finds and estimate their historical bearing, and it also catalogues all the inscribed and sculptured stones found at Corbridge and Halton, with the 'literature' relating to them. Mr. Knowles contributes a plan of the Corbridge excavations to the end of 1912.

(30) The Corbridge excavations of 1913 are described by Mr. R. H.

Forster, who was in personal charge of the work, Mr. W. H. Knowles, and myself, in _Archaeologia Aeliana_ (third series, 1914, xi. 279-310); see also a short account by myself in the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London_ (xxvi. 185-9). The discoveries were comparatively few; they comprised some ill-preserved and mostly insignificant buildings on the north side of the site, some ditches, and a stretch of the road leading to the north (Dere Street). Among small objects were an interesting but imperfect altar to 'Panthea ...', a bronze 'balsamarium'

showing a puzzling variety of barbarian's head, and another piece of the Corbridge grey _applique_ ware. A short account of the excavations of 1914 (see above, p. 9) is contained in the _Journal of the British Archaeological a.s.sociation_ (xx. 343).

(31) The _Proceedings of the Berwick Naturalists' Club_ (vol. x.x.xii, part 2) print an agreeable paper by Mr. James Curle, describing Dere Street and some Roman posts on it between Tyne and Tweed.

_Notts._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23. ROMAN SITE NEAR EAST BRIDGEFORD, NOTTS. (No.

32)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 24. DECORATION OF ENAMELLED SEAL-BOX.]

(32) About ten miles east from Nottingham, and a mile south of the village of East Bridgeford, the Fosse-way crosses a Roman site which has usually been identified with the Margidunum of the Antonine Itinerary.

Lately excavation has been attempted, and the _Antiquary_ of December 1914 contains an interesting account of the results attained up to the end of 1913, with some ill.u.s.trations.[12] A very broad earthwork and ditch surround an area of 7 acres, rhomboidal in shape (fig. 23).

In this area the excavators, Drs. Felix Oswald and T. D. Pryce, have turned up floor-tesserae, roof-slates, flue-tiles, window-gla.s.s, painted wall-plaster, potsherds of the first and later centuries, including a black bowl with a well-modelled figure of Mercury in relief, coins ranging down to the end of the fourth century (Eugenius), and other small objects of interest, such as the small seal-box with Late-Celtic enamel, shown in fig. 24. No foundations _in situ _have yet come to light, but that is doubtless to follow; only a tiny part of the whole area has, as yet, been touched. Margidunum may have begun as a fort coeval with the Fosse-way, which (if I am right) dates from the earliest years of the Roman Conquest. Whether any of the first-century potsherds as yet found there can be a.s.signed to these years (say A.D. 45-75) is not clear. But the excavations plainly deserve to be continued.

[Footnote 12: By the courtesy of the publisher of the _Antiquary_, Mr.

Elliot Stock, I am able to reproduce two of these ill.u.s.trations (figs.

23, 24).]

_Shropshire_

(33) Mr. Bushe-Fox's second Report on his excavations at Wroxeter (_Reports of the Research Committee of the London Society of Antiquaries_, No. II, Oxford, 1914) deserves all the praise accorded to his first Report. I can only repeat what I said of that; it is an excellent description, full and careful, minute in its account of the smaller finds, lavishly ill.u.s.trated, admirably printed, and sold for half a crown. The finds which it enumerates in detail I summarized in my Report for 1913, pp. 19-20--the temple with its interesting Italian plan, the fragments of sculpture which seem to belong to it, the crowd of small objects, the ma.s.ses of Samian (indefatigably recorded), the 528 coins; all combine to make up an admirable pamphlet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 27. THE PODIUM, AS SEEN FROM THE NORTH

(The measuring staff to the right stands in the _cella_, the floor of which is slightly higher than that of the portico to the left of it)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 28. EAST WALL OF PODIUM, COURSED MASONRY WITH CLAY AND RUBBLE FOUNDATIONS]

I will venture a suggestion on the temple. This, as I pointed out last year, is on the Italian, not on the Celto-Roman plan. But one item is not quite clear in it. All ordinary cla.s.sical temples stood on _podia_ or platforms which raised them above the surrounding surface at least to some small extent. Mr. Bushe-Fox speaks of a _podium_ to the Wroxeter temple. But it appears that he does not mean a _podium_, as generally understood. The masonry which he denotes by that term was, in his opinion, buried underground and merely foundation. The floor of the portico of the temple (he says) was about level with the floor of the court which surrounded the temple; the floor of the _cella_, though higher, was but a trifle higher (see figs. 26, 27). This view needs more reflection than he has given it in his rather brief account. No doubt a temple in a Celtic land might have been built on a cla.s.sical plan, though without a cla.s.sical _podium_. But it is not what one would most expect. Nor do I feel sure that it was actually done at Wroxeter in this case. The walls which Mr. Bushe-Fox explains as the foundations of the temple are quite needlessly good masonry for foundations never meant to be seen; this will be plain from figs. 27, 28, which I reproduce by permission from his Report. Further, as fig. 26 (from the same source) shows, there was outside the base of this masonry a level cobbled surface, for which no structural reason is to be found. This, one may guess, was a pavement at the original ground-level when the temple was first erected; from this, steps presumably led up to the floor of the portico and _cella_. The 'podium', then, was at first a real _podium_.

Later, the ground-level rose, and the walls of the _podium_ were buried.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 25. TEMPLE AT WROXETER]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 26. FOUNDATIONS OF WROXETER TEMPLE]

_Somerset_

(34) In his handsome volume, _Wookey Hole, its caves and cave-dwellers_ (London, 1914), Mr. H. E. Balch collects for general antiquarian readers the results of his long exploration of this Mendip cave; some of these results were noted in my Report for 1913, p. 47. The cave, as a whole, contained--besides copious prehistoric remains--two well-defined Roman layers, with many potsherds, including a little Samian and one Samian stamp given as PIIR PIIT OFII (apparently a new variety of Perpetuus), broken gla.s.s, a few fibulae and other bronze and iron objects, and 106 coins. These coins are:--1 Republican (124-103 B.C., Marcia), 1 Vespasian, 1 t.i.tus, 1 Trajan, 2 Hadrian, 2 Pius; then, 3 Gallienus, 1 Salonina, 1 Carausius, 2 Chlorus, 1 Theodora, 6 Constantinopolis, 1 Crispus, 4 Constantine II, 4 Magnentius, 4 Constantius II, with 20 Valentinian I, 14 Valens, 21 Gratian, 7 Valentinian II, and 6 illegible.