Life and Times in the The Roman-British Villa

[Faustus]

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three)

 

Pilgrim Sanctuaries, Shrines, and Temples

In the north no such sites connected with commerce religion are know to archeology. But literature mentions the Locus Maponi or meeting-place of Maponus, the Celtic god who was equated with the classical Apollo in his double aspect of youth and harper. This place may reasonably be identified with Clochmabenstane on the north shore of the Solway, where in later days the medieval English and Scottish wardens of the Marches met to settle common affairs. But the name is composite, half Brythonic and half English, stane having been added by Anglians who did not understand the Brythonic cloch.

 

So the stone of Maponus was a traditional meeting-place, and in Roman frontier politics played its part as one of those permitted places of assembly for markets and public business which enabled Rome to control tribal gatherings. It is significant, too that the god under whose auspices the assemblage took place was not a war-god, but a bardic god whose function was the peaceful entertainment of music. Other loca there were, but their names, where intelligible, are connected with tribes and not with deities, unless indeed the tribes, like the Brigantes, with their deity Brigans or Brigantia , had a guardian god or goddess whose name was identical with the adjectival form of their own. Not all sanctuaries were connected with fairs and markets and the number of shrines scattered through the countryside must have been very large indeed. To describe them individually is quite outside the scope of this [essay], though some of the cults associated with them are considered by themselves [elsewhere]. Here, however, certain classes may be mentioned since they must have formed one of the most characteristic features in the rural landscape, quite apart from the cult of which they formed the centre.

 

The most important is the pilgrim-sanctuary, of which the shrine of Nodens at Lydney, on the north side of the Severn estuary, provides a striking example.

 

Lydney Pilgrim Sanctuary ~ Site Plan With Scale

Lydney Late-Fourth-Century Pilgrim Shrine of Nodens

 

Nodens, who was sometimes equated by his worshippers with Silvanus, was certainly a god of hunting. But the bronze applied decoration on one of the ritual crowns of his ministrants shows that he was also a water-god, who journeyed majestically over the waves in a car drawn by four sea-horses: one thinks of the Severn bore, which begins near Lydney its formidable sweep at every tide. His temple, which belongs to after A.D. 364, occupies a prominent spur overlooking the estuary. It was a large building divided into nave and ambulatory, the later equipped in due course with side-chapels. It was lavishly furnished with mosaic pavements, the most important of which, in the sanctuary, carried an inscribed dedication by the chief of a naval repair-yard (prefectus reliquationis) and a staff-interpreter.

 

The plan of the building belongs to neither the Celtic nor the purely classical world, but is a form borrowed from the East; and the suggestion has been made, without definite proof, that it owes something to Christian inspirations. The most interesting buildings, however, so far as the social side of the Lydney establishment is concerned, are those which surround the temple court, which occupies the whole of the hill-top. There is a long portico, rather like one side of a cloister, divided into open-fronted cells. This is a type of structure well-known in classical sanctuaries of healing, where the sick slept in hope of divine counsel through dreams or even of personal curative action by the god or his priests.

 

On an adjacent site to that occupied by the portico lay a courtyard building with numerous rooms and a large and imposing front reception-hall. A commodious set of baths associated with this inn or guest-house add the essential hall-mark of Roman civilization. It is obvious that the establishment was planned for well-to-do visitors, who could pay good fees for attentions or benefits received. But not all the functions of Nodens were related to healing. As a god of hunting, he was expected by some of his worshippers to seek out and restore lost property, so that he was a god whose functions were hardly less diverse than his nature. Historically, the most interesting side of this cult is its late date, in an Empire slowly becoming Christian; and no less remarkable than this survival of paganism is the fact that in the last quarter of the fourth century A.D. a site of this kind, overlooking the Bristol Channel could be considered a safe and even lucrative proposition. The status of this one, of its important patrons as a naval officer is a pointed reminder of the fleet to which the district owed its peace and safety.

 

This temple of Nodens lies on a hill-top and within the lines of an ancient hill-fort. It was thus with another late-Roman sanctuary, which was established, again after A.D. 364, in the long-deserted but gloriously imposing hill-fort of Maiden Castle, the ancient Dunum, which had been superseded by the Romanized town of Durnonovaria in the seventies of the first century A.D. The shrine built here was a simple edifice of the box-like Celtic plan, though the deity worshipped therein combined with a human nature the wisdom and the strength respectively of an owl and a bull. Side by side with the shrine lay a small priest

[Faustus]

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three)

 

Wayside Shrines, Temples

It may well be asked what general notion prompted the late establishment of sanctuaries in the old deserted high places? There are other examples, as at Lydney, Chanctonbury Ring (Sussex), and Harlow Hill (Essex), and it can hardly be doubted that more existed. Was it the final flicker of paganism, or a turning to the old gods in centres of ancient valiance as times grew more uncertain? Or were the ancient gods taking refuge in the wilderness as Christianity spread in the towns? In some places, indeed, the old gods remained firmly in possession of their pre-Roman shrines. This state of affairs, already noted at Gosbecks, is exemplified by Frilford, north-west of Abingdon, where two Romanized shrines lie on top of an earlier wooden building. The pre-existing building had taken the form of a circular ditched enclosure containing an open covered shed, like a presepio, where holy images, cult objects, or offerings had been exposed to view.

 

In the Roman period this earlier shrine was razed to the ground and replaced by a circular enclosure of which the contents are not now evident, while a new temple of the native box-like form was built alongside and later received an extension. Occupation or this site continued into the fifth century A.D. and there can be no doubt either of the antiquity or the popularity of this country shrine or group of shrines. As a group, of which other members perhaps remain to be discovered, it resembles the forest sanctuaries of Roman Gaul, where numerous godlings attracted long and late to a single holy spot their several groups or categories of worshippers. Wayside shrines form another common class. Such are the Surrey temples at Titsey on the Downs, adjacent to the Roman road between London and the Ouse valley, and again at Farley Heath, Aldbury.

 

Of different type are shrines and pavilions, which yielded a relief of Diana and a hound and an altar to Apollo Cunomaglus, situated on the Fosse Way at Nettleton Shrub, ten miles north-east of Bath. The Watling Street shrines at Barkway (Hertfordshire), sacred to Mars Alator, and at Stony Stratford Buckinghamshire), dedicated to Toutates, produced the beautiful silver plaques now in the British Museum, but no building which has been recorded. North of Lancaster, the shrine of Ialonus, god of the meadow-land, which again is known from an altar and not from buildings, lay close to the Roman road heading for the fort at Watercrook, near Kendal.

 

Watling Street shrines at Barkway (Hertfordshire), sacred to Mars Alator Spring and river-gods also had their sacred dwellings. At Chester-le-Street, Condatis, god of the watersmeet, had an altar at the confluence of the River Wear and the Cong Burn. Verbeia, goddess of the River Wharfe, was worshipped at Ilkley. No temple at the source of a great river is known in Britain, but it can hardly be doubted that they existed, particularly when rivers frequently bore divine names, such as Belisama (the Ribble), Deva (the Dee), or Brigantia (the Brent).

 

A hunter

[Faustus]

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three)

 

Sacred Groves, Tombs, and Cemeteries

Sacred groves are archaeologically unresponsive, though the planning of many temple enclosures seems to imply their existence. But place-names in Britain indicate a very few of the many there must have been. The Celtic word for such a spot was nemeton, which is explained in an ancient glossary as meaning, in the plural, sacra silvarum