We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2011
At the present moment, nothing, perhaps, would so much extend our knowledge of the Roman Empire as a close study of the character and history of its town-sites. It is only by working out the details of inhabited sites—and especially of towns—one by one, that we can get the premises needed for certain general conclusions as to the history of the Empire and, above all, of its provinces. If, for example, we can prove (as I believe we can) that many provincial towns were founded or first developed, or began especially to flourish, in the Flavian age (A. D. 70–96), we shall gain light on the spirit of that age, and on the policy of its government, which we cannot obtain otherwise. These things are not told us by ancient writers, not even by Tacitus; archaeology alone reveals them.
page 162 note 1 I may refer in this context to Dr. Karl Schuchhardt's paper ‘West-Europa als alter Kulturkreis’, arguing that, in prehistoric days too, Spain, France, and South England had a definite Kultur of their own, distinct from that of Mid-Europe (Sitzungsberichte der kgl.preussischen Akademie der Wisseuschaften, Berlin, 1913, xxxvii, pp. 734–65)Google Scholar.
page 163 note 1 The matter is not so certain as is usually stated:—(a) Ravennas (427. 16) names a place, Cironium Dobunorum, apparently on a road between Gloucester and Silchester. (b) Ptolemy, Geogr. ii, 3, 12—the best authority for the spelling of the name—has Κορίνιον (some MSS. have Κορίννιον) as the only ‘town’ of the Dobuni. But (c) the Antonine Itinerary (485. 5) places, plainly close to where Circencester now stands, a station Durocornovium. Hiibner accepted this name (Corpus Inscriptionum, vii, p. 29). He connected it with the Purocoronavis of Ravennas (424. 9); but, apart from its first letter (P), that cannot be Circencester, since it was probably in West Devon; in any case, it is unknown and unidentifiable, (d) Philological difficulties beset the derivation of the modern name Circencester from a Romano-British form, Corinium; since the early English forms of the name (Cyrenccaster, etc.) presuppose a form Curin-, not Corin-. The spelling in Ravennas, Cironium, would provide a satisfactory philological ancestor for Cirencester, but the evidence of Ptolemy is against it. Mr. W. H. Stevenson suggests to me that, nevertheless, the difficulty may be solved if we can suppose a Welsh influence, which would account for the phonetic irregularity, and would permit us to derive Circencester from Corinium; see his views, set out by himself, in an appendix to this article, p. 200. The other difficulty, caused by the Itinerary with its Durocornovium, may be solved by thinking that, as the MSS. of the Itinerary vary, there may be an error in its text. Durocornovium itself, according to the late de Jubainville, M. d'Arbois (Noms gaulois chez César, Paris, 1891, p. 208)Google Scholar, is an adjective, with which praedium or the like is to be supplied; it means ‘property of Durocornovius’ (or, ‘of Cornovius of the fortress’): he, maybe, was a wanderer from the Cornovii in Shropshire, who settled at Circencester and bore his tribal name.—The territory of the Dobuni extended from Herefordshire (Eph. Epigr. ix, pp. 635, 636) into Oxfordshire: its exact limits are uncertain.—(Mr. Baddeley's interesting note on the name Circencester (Gloucestershire Place-names, Gloucester, 1913, p. 43)Google Scholar is, I think, not quite accurate.)
page 165 note 1 In early medieval documents, as Mr. W. H. Stevenson tells me, the name Akeman Street does not occur so far west as Cirencester. ‘Via Acmana’, anyhow, should disappear from maps; it is merely a bogus Latinism; no Roman could have used a road-name derived from a post-Roman appellation.
page 166 note 1 Such special roads to large country-houses exist, or have lately existed (as I am told) in several modern countries—for instance in Spain and in Ireland, where in Connemara one case has been cited to me of a special road of this sort 40 miles long, from Galway westwards to Ballinahinch.
page 166 note 2 Buckman and Newmarch, , Illustrations of the Remains of Roman Art in Cirencester (1850), p. 10Google Scholar. What stone-face (if any) the wall had on the inner side (towards the town) seems not to be certain. Cf. infra, p. 180 (iii).Google ScholarPubMed
page 166 note 3 Printed accessibly in Bristol and Glouc. Archaeol. Soc. Trans., xiv, 228.Google Scholar
page 167 note 1 Compare similar turns at gates at Newstead, near Melrose, and at Castlecary on the Wall of Pius in Scotland, and also at Noviomagus, Nymwegen in Holland (Holwerda, J. H., De Stad der Bataven en de Ronieinsche Vesting te Nijmegen (Leiden, 1918), Afb. 5). I suspect that such entrances may be connected with the first century A. D., in point of date; if so, the outline of Corinium must have been fixed in that century, though the actual wall may be later.Google Scholar
page 167 note 2 Thucydides, i, 10, 2: ‘for, if Sparta were laid empty, and its temples and the foundations of its structures were left, I suspect that, in time to come, men would much mistrust the report of its power, although the Spartans now rule two-fifths of the Peloponnese, and control the whole and also many allies outside it. … Therefore (continues the historian) one must not be sceptical, or consider only external appearances.’
page 168 note 1 Cripps, W. J., Proceedings (1898), xvii, 201–8 (with two plans, here reproduced).Google Scholar
page 168 note 2 The Basilicas at Caerwent, Wroxeter, and Silchester were about 180 ft., 229 ft., and 240 ft. long respectively.
page 170 note 1 The Barton mosaics, lately restored for Lord Bathurst by Mr. A. H. Powell, were figured in colour by Buckman and Newmarch in their 4° edition, p. 25 foll. For the ‘Bull-ring’ see the same, p. 12, pl. i. The earthen mounds round the floor of the Amphitheatre are 20 ft. high, and enclose an oval space 134 ft. by 148 ft. There are two entrances 28 ft. wide, one at each end of the major axis; Rudder (Glouc, p. 349) gives the diameters as 46 yds. by 63 yds., but he seems to include the mounds as well as the floor of the amphitheatre. Although the exact character of the disturbed ground, commonly known as the ‘Querns’, is not clear, there seems no reason to reject the idea that it was an amphitheatre. A stone found at Chedworth scratched PRASUTA (Prasuta[gus]) or PRASLNA (Praslata) —not PRASIATA as in J. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxiv, p. 132, pl. xii, 4Google Scholar, and CIL. vii, 72Google Scholara—indicates some interest hereabouts in chariot contests in an amphitheatre. There were amphitheatres at Caerwent, at Silchester, at Dorchester in Dorset, perhaps at Leicester, and other towns. They were commoner in Roman Britain than Dr, L. Friedlander at all realized (Sittengcschichte Roms (ed. 8,1910), ii, pp. 558–632).
page 171 note 1 Buckman and Newmarch, pp. 25, 35 foll., with a small plan, but no scale: elaborate coloured plates of the mosaics are added in the 4° edition. See list nos. 4 and 5, below p. 174.
page 172 note 1 Here it seems to agree with a long, very straight garden road shown in Lysons’ Map of Cirencester, Reliq. ii, plate III (1817).
page 172 note 2 See Bristol and Glouc. Archaeol. Soc. Trans., xvii, 12–13 J information from Mrs. Cripps. No plan of these roads has been issued, but I have been able to include them in my plan, by Mrs. Cripps's kindness. See also below, p. 176, note 1.
page 172 note 3 Cripps, W. J., Proceedings, xvii, p. 202.Google Scholar
page 172 note 4 The insulae of the western provinces are much larger, just as they are more irregular, than those of Italy or Africa: see, for details, my Ancient Town-Planning (Oxford, 1913, pp. 83 foll.). But the western world seems to have used larger gardens than Italy or Africa, where the house-blocks appear to have been more like large tenement-houses, while at Silehester each insula was a garden with one or more detached houses in it. This is part of the difference between the towns of western Europe and those of the Central Empire. It is quite conceivable that much of the large area of Cirencester was taken up by gardens; at the same time, the position of the mosaics (see general plan) shows that the houses were many, and probably large, in most parts of the town. They seem to be few in the northeast; but that is because there has been little building and street-making there in recent times, and therefore little excavation and few discoveries.Google ScholarPubMed
page 173 note 1 For much aid in compiling this list I am indebted to the active co-operation of Miss M.V. Taylor, M.A. The middle column (Remarks) is intended to show both the character of the design, so far as recorded, and also the character of the site.
page 176 note 1 Note to no. 24. Walls were found under the Cotswold Brewery, just south of Cole's Mill, at E. corner of Lewis Lane and Watermoor Road, in 1915; more walls, in the winter of 1915–16, also the base of a pillar (now supporting an iron pillar) and a gate-pier in a jamb. Under the Mill engine-house was found in March 1907 part of a road thought to run north and south; it was about 6 ft. below the present floor and 26 ft. east of Watermoor Road. Close to Watermoor Road was part of a gravel floor. (Information from Mr. Taylor.)
page 177 note 1 Note to no. 27. Mr. Taylor records that a line of piers or columns crossed Lewis Lane from north-west to south-east, from Glouc. and Wilts. Standard Printing Works to junction of Dyer Street and Lewis Lane, where he saw one pier himself.
page 178 note 1 Note to no. 40. The excavator (Mr. Banks) calls it New Road (i.e. Victoria Road); it is really Church Street, Victoria Road.
page 179 note 1 Bristol and Glouc. Arch. Soc. Trans., xiv, 229; Brayley and Britton, Beauties of England (1803), v, 594 note, cited a MS. note referring to a find made in 1562 in a field called Chesterton Farm, apparently in the neighbourhood of ‘the Leauses’ and Watermoor, of ‘several Roman pillars with capitals, variously wrought, besides small fragments of what was then called a bath; but these were removed to the Abbey, but are now lost’. They may have been connected with similar finds made at ‘the Leauses ‘in 1838 and at other times, including the capital mentioned above and on p. 191.
page 180 note 1 Proceedings, xviii, 177 foll.Google Scholar
page 182 note 1 Like the Italian name Solinus, Sulinus is exceedingly rare (indeed, it seems to occur nowhere else); we need not hesitate to identify two men who have the same parentage and bear the same unique name.
page 182 note 2 Cripps, W. J., Proceedings, xviii, 177–84 with figs.Google Scholar
page 183 note 1 See my paper and map in Archaeologia Aeliana, xv (1892), 314–40Google Scholar. For the Danube provinces see Ihm in Banner Jahrbütcher, lxxxiii, 156Google Scholar; CIL. iii, 4766 and 11621; Jahrbuch fiir Alterhunskunde, iii (1909), Beiblatt, p. 75 a, fig. 38 a. For a recently discovered Scottish example, the only one yet found north of the Tweed, see Proc. Soc. Antiq. of Scotland, 1918, pp. 38 ff.
page 184 note 1 Admirably described in Mrs. Strong's, E.Roman Sculpture (1907), pl. viii, p. 42.Google Scholar
page 184 note 2 That is the case, too, with some details of Samian ware. See a paper by Drexel, , Bonner Jahrbücher, cxviii, 176.Google Scholar
page 185 note 1 See a paper by Jones, H. S. and myself, Journal of Roman Studies, ii, pp. 138Google Scholar foll., figs. 12–13.
page 185 note 2 It may be as well to add a caution that Hübner, in the seventh volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum (pp. 29–31), mixed up the inscriptions found at Cirencester with those found at Gloucester. This is only one of the innumerable errors which disfigure his volume.
page 185 note 3 [The two most important cemeteries of Cirencester seem to have been on the south at Watermoor, just outside the wall and close to the so-called Ermine Way, and on the west at the Querns.]
page 187 note 1 Possibly this curious cloak may be made of Cotswold wool—a point to which I shall return below.
page 187 note 2 The name Philus is, of course, Greek (фίλος), but need not be taken to denote slave descent, as Greek cognomina often do in the Empire; it must rather be compared with the Greek names of Gaulish potters—Chrestus, Apolaustus, and the like. Such Greek names were not uncommon in the Rhone valley (Narbonese Gaul), and may have spread thence northwards. There was, indeed, near Besançon, a place called ‘Philomusiacus’—probably ‘the (farm of) Philomusus ’(Peutinger Map), a Greek name with a Celtic suffix appended. We may trace here the influence of the old Greek colony at Massilia (Marseilles).
page 187 note 3 The inscriptions of Bath mention several Gauls who migrated there, doubtless in search of health; such are (i) one Peregrinus, from Trèves, who erected an altar at Bath to a god specially worshipped in the Trèves district; he may have been a civilian; (2) one Rusonia Aventina from the Gaulish district round Metz; (3) one Priscus, son of Toutius, who was born at or near Chartres, and calls himself ‘lapidarius’; he apparently, like Sulinus son of Brucetus, came in search of the Bath stone (Eph. epigr., ix, 995).
page 187 note 4 See Ihm, , Bonner Jahrb., lxxxiii, 1–200Google Scholar, and my paper in Archaeologia Acliana, xv, 324 (1892)Google Scholar; an altar dedicated matribus Sulevis is at Colchester (Eph. epigr. vii, 844). The name has nothing to do with that of Sulis, the patron goddess of Bath; anyhow, there seems no reason to think that it has.
page 188 note 1 Published by me, Eph. epigr. ix, 997, and Archaeologia Oxoniensis (1894), p. 215; and by Chr. Bowly, Trans. Bristol and Clone. Arehaeol. Sac, xvii, 63.
page 189 note 1 So the late eminent latinist, Prof. F. Bücheler of Bonn, in his Carmina Latina Epigraphica, i, no. 277 (Teubner, 1895). As the column could only stand vertically upright, the meaning produced is not very good. Bücheler also read, in the first line derectam, to mend the metre. But the metre is hardly worth mending. As I go to press, Professor Rostovtzeff suggests that prisca regione might be retained, with the sense of ‘its previous place ’, as if prisco loco. That would certainly make good sense. [After seeing the stone and observing that there was just room for two letters, Professor Rostovtzeff thinks that religione may stand.]
page 191 note 1 Haug, F., Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, x, pp. 9–340Google Scholar; Fr. Hertlein, , Die Juppitergigantensäulen (Stuttgart, 1910).Google Scholar See also Journal of Roman Studies, i, 23 (Mrs. Strong), and ibid, iv, 120 (Adolphe Reinach, one of the very learned archaeologists whom the war has taken away from learning). Dr. Fr. Cumont, the Belgian archaeologist, perhaps the best living judge of such a question, takes these columns to be ‘monuments votifs élevés a l'image des … Césars, vainqueurs des Germains’ (Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire, Catal. des sculptures, &c, p. 205, no. 169). See also Espérandieu, Revue archéologique, 1912 (ii), 211. A monument relating to barbarians is, of course, appropriate to the age (after A. D. 300) when our column seems to have been set up. But others are much earlier; one (at Mainz) dates from the reign of Nero (A. D. 54–68), an age when the Romans regarded the Germans as formidable: see p. 192, note 6.
page 191 note 2 As a parallel, note the occurrence on a few British sites of representations of the deities of the eight days of the week, which occur mostly in Britain, and in Eastern Gaul or Western Germany: see my accounts, V. C. H. Hants., i, 308Google Scholar; Northants, i, 181.Google Scholar
page 191 note 3 Buckman and Newmarch, p. 20, foil.; Gent. Mag. 1838, ii, 180. The capital has been restored as shown in plates IX and X. Fig. 16 shows it before restoration.
page 192 note 1 Many are in the Lateran Museum at Rome.
page 192 note 2 Archaeologia, xvii, 124, pl. viii.Google Scholar
page 192 note 3 Journal of Roman Studies, i, 23Google Scholar note; so previously Hertlein, op. cit., p. 22, note.Google ScholarPubMed
page 192 note 4 Hercules, Minerva, Mercury, Juno do not fit in; otherwise one might think that these gods, absent from the pedestal, were depicted on the capital.
page 192 note 5 Juppiter column with irrelevant ornament. See references above.
page 192 note 6 Körber, , Mainzer Zeitschrift des röm.-germ. Central-Museums, 1909, i, pp. 54–63Google Scholar, and separately (Mainz, 1915); Domaszewski, A. v., Abhandlungen zur römischen Religion, pp. 139–48'Google Scholar; Dessau, , Inscript. Selectae, 9235 (addenda).Google Scholar
page 193 note 1 I may say that the readings have in almost all cases been verified by two pairs of eyes. These little inscriptions are often hard to decipher; it is desirable, wherever possible, to back each reading with two opinions, and very dangerous not to do so.
page 193 note 2 Not a little Roman pottery has occurred at Silchester and is now in Reading Museum, which was made in the pottery works at Arezzo, and dates from about A.D. 10–15. See my notes in the Cambridge Antiquarian Society's Communications, xx, 1917, pp. 56–7Google Scholar, and Oxé, , Archäologischer Anzeiger, xxix (1914), pp. 61–70.Google Scholar These potsherds, which I imagine reached Britain by way of trade, indicate some form of civilized life in our island about the time of the death of Augustus and the accession of Tiberius (A.D. 14).
page 194 note 1 For Bronze Cupid in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from Cirencester, see p. 202, below, Pl. viii.
page 194 note 2 British History, iv, 15. Claudius, according to Geoffrey, had a son Glouis, whose name has clearly some relation to the first syllable of Gloucester'.
page 196 note 1 Mommsen, writing thirty-five or forty years ago (Röm. Gesch., 1885, v, 174; Engl. trans., The Provinces of the Roman Empire, 1909, i, 191), declared that the cantonal constitution was not used by the Romans in Britain, as it was in Gaul. But he wrote before a certain Caerwent inscription was discovered in 1903. See my Romanization of Roman Britain (ed. 3), pp. 59–60, fig. 23; Eph. epigr. ix, 1012.
page 196 note 2 Edict. Dioclet. xix, 36Google Scholar. Compare Not. Dignit. Occ. (Mommsen, 1876) xi, 60, referring apparently to the South Down sheep round Winchester.
page 198 note 1 See my notes in Archaeological Journal, lvi, 1899, p. 319Google Scholar, and Journal of Anthropological Institute, 1899, p. 306 (with illustrations).
page 198 note 2 An example found near Montélimar, in S. France, has been called Roman by a German scholar (CIL. xii, 202), but he had no exact copy. A transcript which I owe to my late colleague, the Rev. T. V. Bayne of Christ Church, Oxford, shows that the stone is medieval work.
page 198 note 3 See further, Eph. epigr. ix, p. 519, n. 1001Google Scholar; Deonna, , Revue dss etudes grecques, xx, 1907, p. 365Google Scholar; Sayce, A. H., Recueil des travaux relatifs à la philol, et à I'arch, égypt. et assyr. xx, 176, and reff. in note 47.Google Scholar
page 198 note 4 V.C.H. Somerset, I. 224.Google Scholar
page 199 note 1 See my Ancient Town-Planning, pp. 141–2.Google ScholarPubMed
page 199 note 2 Much information with fine coloured plates of mosaics was given by Lysons in his Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae (issued 1810 to 1817).
page 204 note 1 It is worth mentioning that in the Matres reliefs of Gaul the goddess with the child is usually to the left of the central figure. See Espérandieu, Recueil général des bas-reliefs &c. de la Gaule romaine III, 1831 (Autun), 2081 (Beaune), IV, 3377 (Vertault); sometimes, as in some of the British reliefs, she is herself the central figure; see ibid. Ill, 1742 and 2064.
page 206 note 1 See Wigand, K., Jahreshefte des Oesterreichischen Archäologischen Institutes, 1915 (xviii), 189 foll., from which are taken figs. 17–20, kindly procured by Prof. Dr. Emil Reisch of Vienna, Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, at Prof. Haverfield's request.Google Scholar
page 207 note 1 See Buren, Van, Journal of Roman Studies, III (1913), 134 foll.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 207 note 2 I must insist on this denomination of the central figure of the Ara Pacis relief, though Mr. Van Buren proposes to recognize in it the personification of Italy, cf. Sieveking in Berliner philologische Wochenschrift, 1917, 1249 foll. Mr. Van Buren has omitted one striking parallel to the figure of the Ara Pacis—the coins of Hadrian, Faustina Junior and Commodus, representing the Earth and inscribed Tellus stabilita. See especially the medallion of Antoninus Pius in Gnecchi, I Medaglioni romani, II, pl. 54, 7.
page 208 note 1 On the cult of Fecunditas Augusta see Roscher in Roscher's Lexikon, s. v.; Stevenson, Dict.of Roman Coins, s.v.; Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. des Antiq., s.v. For the coins see Cohen (2nd ed.), II, p. 429, no.205, and also Gnecchi, I Medaglioni, I, pl. 46, 7 for Faustina Senior; III, p. 143 foll.,93–104 (standing type) and 104–106 (seated type), and also Gnecchi, I, pl. 67, 2 and 69, 8 for Faustina Junior; III, p. 216, 18 24 (seated type) and 25–26(standing type) for Lucilla; IV, p. 109, 39–40 and 45 (standing type) and 41–44 (seated type), and also Grueber, Roman Medallions in the British Museum (pl. xxxvii)for Julia Domna.
