attempted in a Roman 'villa' at Litlington (Cambs.) but, as Prof.
McKenny Hughes tells me, with little success. The 'beautifully tiled
and marbled floors' are newspaper exaggeration. A 'Roman bath' which
was stated to have been found early in 1914 at Kingston-on-Thames,
in the work of widening the bridge, is declared by Mr. Mill Stephenson
not to be Roman at all. Lastly, an excavation of an undoubted Roman
house at Broom Farm, between Hambledon and Soberton in south-east Hants,
projected by Mr. A. Moray Williams, was prevented by the war, which
called Mr. Williams to serve his country.
(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 associations 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 hoard 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 hoard may have been buried about A.D. 280, but it has to
be added that 130 coins have not been yet identified. Hoards of somewhat
this date are exceedingly common; in 1901 I published accounts of two
such hoards detected, shortly before that, at points quite close to the
findspot of the present hoard (see _Sussex 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
Jahrbücher_, 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:--
[Illustration: 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 assume 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 grass 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).
[Illustration: 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 _Aurelianus_ at Oehringen (_ibid._
6541).
_Vindolandesses_, which is merely a phonetic spelling or misspelling of
_Vindolandenses_, gives the correct name of the fort. In the Notitia
it is spelt Vindolana, in the Ravennas (431. 11) Vindolanda; and as
in general the Ravennas teems with errors and the Notitia 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 space, 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 classes; 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_OLYBI·I
(_c_) punctate: LICINIANI
The stamps of the Campanian bronze-worker Cipius Polybius are well
known. Upwards of forty have been found, rather curiously distributed
(in the main) between Pompeii and places on or near the Rhenish and
Danubian frontiers, in northern Britain, and in German and Danish
lands outside the Roman Empire. The stamped 'paterae' of other Cipii
and other bronze-workers have a somewhat similar distribution; it
seems that the objects were made in the first century A.D., in or
near Pompeii, and were chiefly exported to or beyond the borders of the
Empire. Their exact use is still uncertain, I have discussed them in the
_Archaeological Journal_, xlix, 1892, pp. 228-31; they have since been
treated more fully by H. Willers (_Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor_, 1901, p.
213, and _Neue Untersuchungen über die römische Bronzeindustrie_, 1907,
p. 69).
I have to thank Mr. W. M. Egglestone, of Stanhope, for information and
for rubbings of the stamps. The E in the first stamp seems clear on the
rubbing; all other examples have here I· or I. In the second stamp, the
conclusion might be BI·F. The _graffito_ was first read INVINDA; it is,
however, certainly as given above.
(8) Found at Holt, eight miles south of Chester (see above, p. 15), in
the autumn of 1914, built upside down into the outer wall of a kiln, a
centurial stone of the usual size and character, 10 inches long, 7-8
inches high, with letters (3/4-1 inch tall) inside a rude label
[C]CESo
NIANA
_c(enturia) C(a)esoniana_, set up by the century under Caesonius.
[Transcribers Note: The bracketed "C" above is printed reversed in the
original.]
Like another centurial stone found some time ago at Holt (Eph. Epigr.
ix. 1035), this was not found _in situ_; the kiln or other structure
into the wall of which it was originally inserted must have been pulled
down and its stones used up again.
The centuries mentioned would of course be units from the Twentieth
Legion at Chester.
(9) Found at Holt late in 1914, a fragment of tile (about 7 × 7 inches)
with parts of two (or three) lines of writing scratched on it.
...LIVITILI..
..IT TAL..
.........
I can offer no guess at the sense of this. The third line may be mere
scratches. I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Acton for sending Nos. 8 and 9 to
me for examination.
(10) Found at Lincoln in 1906, on the site of the Technical Schools
extensions (outside the east wall of the lower Roman town), a fragment
from the lower right-hand corner of an inscribed slab flanked with
foliation, 13 inches tall, 19 inches wide, with 2-inch lettering.
G | _fol_-
| _iat_-
IND | _ion_.
____|__________
No doubt one should prefix L to IND. That is, the inscription ended with
some part of the Romano-British name of Lincoln, Lindum, or of its
adjective Lindensis. From the findspot it seems probable that the
inscription may have been sepulchral.
I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Smith, Curator of the City and County Museum
at Lincoln, for a squeeze. The stone is now in the Museum.
(11) Found in London near the General Post Office in a rubbish-pit (see
above, p. 23), two pieces of wood from the staves of a barrel which
seems to have served as lining to a pit or well. They bear faint
impressions of a metal stamp; (_a_) is repeated twice.
(_a_) [TE]C·PAGA... _and_ ..C·PA..
(_b_) CS _or_ CB
The first stamp seems to include a name in the genitive, perhaps
_Pacati_, but I do not know what TEC means.
[Transcribers Note: The bracketed [TE] above is a "TE" ligature.]
(12) Found in another rubbish-pit of the same site as No. 11, a plain
gold ring with three sunk letters on the bezel:
Q·D·D
Presumably the initials of an owner. The letters were at first read
O·D·D, but the tail of the Q is discernible.
I am indebted to the Post Office authorities and to Mr. F. Lambert for
a sight of Nos. 11 and 12. The objects are preserved at the General
Post Office.
(13) I add here a note on a Roman milestone found in 1694 near Appleby
and lately refound.
Among the papers of the antiquary Richard Gough in the Bodleian
Library--more exactly, in his copy of Horsley's _Britannia_, gen. top.
128 = MS. 17653, fol. 44 _v._--is recorded the text of a milestone of
the Emperor Philip and his son, 'dug out of ye military way 1694, now
at Hangingshaw'. The entry is written in Gough's own hand on the last
page of a list of Roman and other inscriptions once belonging to
Reginald Bainbridge, who was schoolmaster in Appleby in Elizabeth's
reign and died there in 1606.[8] This list had been drawn up by one
Hayton, under-schoolmaster at Appleby, in 1722 and had been copied out
by Gough. There is, however, nothing to show whether the milestone,
found eighty-eight years after the death of Bainbridge and plainly none
of his collection, was added by Hayton, or was otherwise obtained by
Gough and copied by him on a casually blank page; there is nothing even
to connect either the stone or Hangingshaw with Appleby.
[Footnote 8: As to Bainbridge see my paper in the _Cumberland and
Westmorland Archaeological Transactions_, new series, vol. xi (1911),
pp. 343-78.]
The notice lay neglected till Hübner undertook to edit the Roman
inscriptions of Britain, which he issued in the seventh volume of the
_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_ in 1873. He included the milestone as
No. 1179. But, with his too frequent carelessness--a carelessness which
makes the seventh volume of the _Corpus_ far less valuable than the rest
of the series--he christened the stone, in defiance of dates, No. 17 in
Bainbridge's collection; he also added the statement (which we shall see
to be wrong) that Hangingshaw was near Old Carlisle. Fortunately, in the
autumn of 1914, Mr. Percival Ross, the Yorkshire archaeologist, sent me
a photograph of an inscription which he had come upon, built into the
wall of a farm called Hangingshaw, about 200 yards from the Roman road
which runs along the high ground a little east of Appleby. It then
became plain--despite Hübner's errors--that this stone was that recorded
in Gough's papers, although his copy was in one point faulty and on the
other hand some letters which were visible in 1694 have now apparently
perished. A rubbing sent me by the late Rev. A. Warren of Old Appleby
helped further; I now give from the three sources--Gough's copy, the
photograph, and the rubbing--what I hope may be a fairly accurate text.
I premise that the letters RCO in line 2, LIPPO in 3, PHILIPPO in 8, IMO
in 9, and I in 10 seem to be no longer visible but depend on Gough's
copy.
IMPC[lambda]C
SARIMARCO
IV[L]IOPHILIPPO
PIOFE[L]ICI
INVICTO
AVGVSTO
_p_ERP
ETMIVLPHILIPPO
NOBILISSIMO
CAESARI
[Transcribers Note: The bracketed "L" above are printed with the
horizontal line slanted downwards.]
The chief fault in Gough's copy is the omission of line 6, _Augusto_.
This misled Hübner into treating line 7 (ERP) as a blundered reading of
that necessary word. In reality, line 7 is the most interesting item in
the inscription. It shows that the Emperor Philip was, here at least,
styled _perpetuus Augustus_. That is an appellation to which I find no
exact parallel in Philip's other inscriptions or indeed in any other
imperial inscriptions till half a century after his death. It fits,
however, into a definite development of the Roman imperial titles. In
the earliest Empire, phrases occur, mostly on coins, such as _Aeternitas
imperii_ or _Aeternitas populi romani_. Soon the notion of the stability
of the Empire was transferred to its rulers. As early as Vespasian,
coins bear the legend _aeternitas Augusti_, and in the first years
of the second century Pliny, writing to Trajan, speaks of petitions
addressed _per salutem tuam aeternitatemque_ and of 'works worthy of
the emperor's eternity,' (_opera aeternitate tua digna_). Late in the
second century such phrases become commoner. With Severus Alexander
(A.D. 221-35) coins begin to show the legend _Perpetuitas Aug._, and
before very long the indirect and abstract language changes into direct
epithets which are incorporated in the emperors' titulature. The first
case which I can find of this is that before us, of Philip (A.D. 244-9);
a little later, Aurelian (A.D. 270-5) is styled _semper Augustus_ and,
from Diocletian onwards, _aeternus_, _perpetuus_, and _semper Augustus_
belong to the customary titulature. Constantine I, for example, is
called on one stone _invictus et perpetuus ... semper Augustus_, on
another _perpetuus imperator, semper Augustus_. That Philip should have
been the first to have applied to him, even once, the direct epithet, is
probably a mere accident. One might have wished to connect it with his
Secular Games, celebrated in 248. But by that time his son was no longer
Caesar but full Augustus (since 246), and our stone must fall into the
years 244-6.
The ideas underlying these epithets were perhaps mixed. Notions of or
prayers for the long life of the Empire, the stability of the reigning
house, the long reign of the current emperor, may have jostled with
notions of the immortality of the emperors and their deification, and
with the eastern ideas which poured into Rome as the second century
ended and the third century began.[9] The hardening despotism of the
imperial constitution, growing more and more autocratic every decade,
also helped. As the emperor became unchecked and unqualified monarch,
his appellations grew more emphatic; _perpetuus Augustus, semper
Augustus_ connoted that unchecked and autocratic rule.
[Footnote 9: See an excellent paper by Cumont, _Revue d'Histoire et de
Littérature religieuses_, 1896, pp. 435-52.]
C. PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO ROMAN BRITAIN IN 1914
The following summary of the books and articles on Roman Britain which
appeared in 1914 is grouped under two heads, first, those few which deal
with general aspects of the subject, and secondly, the far larger number
which concern special sites or areas. In this second class, those which
belong to England are placed under their counties in alphabetical order,
while those which belong to Wales and Scotland are grouped under these
two headings. I have in general admitted only matter which was published
in 1914, or which bears that date.
1. GENERAL
(1) Mr. G. L. Cheesman's _Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army_ (Oxford
University Press) does not deal especially with Roman Britain, but it
deserves brief notice here. It is an excellent and up-to-date sketch
of an important section of the Roman army, with which British
archaeologists are much concerned. It also contains valuable lists,
which can be found nowhere else, of the 'auxiliary' regiments stationed
in Britain (pp. 146-9 and 170-1). It is full, cheap, compact; every
historical and archaeological library should get it.