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The Chester Gladiator Rediscovered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Ralph Jackson
Ralph Jackson
Affiliation:
Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, The British Museum, London
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Abstract

The stone relief (PL. XI, FIG. I) which forms the subject of this paper was submitted to the British Museum (Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities) for identification. The relief had been added to the collections of the Saffron Walden Museum in 1836, (reg. no. 1836. no LXXIX). Though it was rumoured to have come from York or Chester, the register entries give the provenance as variously Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 14 , November 1983 , pp. 87 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Ralph Jackson 1983. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 I would like to thank my colleagues Catherine Johns and Tim Potter for their comments and advice, Philip Compton who drew and provided photographs of the relief, and Robert Pengelly who drew FIG. 3.I am grateful also to Mr L. Pole, Curator, and to Miss S. Jordain, Assistant Curator of Saffron Walden Museum, for information supplied and for permission to publish the relief.

2 I am indebted to Donald Bailey for drawing my attention to this primary record.

3 Richard Mead, M.D. (1673–1754), was the chief physician of his day and in 1727 was appointed ‘court physician to George II. He had studied Classical Literature and Antiquities at Utrecht University, and his collection of books, manuscripts, drawings and antiquities was the largest formed in his time; after his death it was sold for more than £16,000.

4 George Vertue (1684–1756), antiquary and official engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, 1717–1756.

5 There is an anonymous pencil drawing, very detailed but not dimensionally accurate (larger than actual size), in the British Museum (K Top IX 8–0). It is undated, but the caption records that the relief is ‘…now in Dr Mead's Collection.’

6 e.g. Journ. Chester Arch. Soc, (O.S.) Vol. 1, Part III, (1854) facing page 332.Google Scholar

7 John Ward, (1679?–1758), professor of rhetoric, Gresham College, 1720; Vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries, 1753; founder Trustee of the British Museum.

8 e.g. F. Gower, Collections for the History of Cheshire: British, Roman and Saxon Period (1779), Brit. Mus. Addl. MSS 11,338, Folio 98.

9 Rev. D. and Lysons, S., Magna Britannia Vol. II, Part 2, (1810), 431.Google Scholar

10 Henry Potts was a member of the firm of Potts and Brown, solicitors of Northgate Street, Chester. He resided in Watergate Street, Chester and was Clerk of the Peace for Cheshire from 1818 to 1846. I am grateful to Miss A. M. Kennett, City Archivist at the Chester City Record Office, for this and other information.

11 Hemingway, J., History of the City of Chester, Vol. II (1831), 351.Google Scholar

12 Thomas Pennant, (1726–1798) traveller and naturalist. F.S.A. 1754–1760.

13 Mr J. Hopkins kindly provided information on this cast.

14 Society of Antiquaries Minute Books, Vol. VII, 158; A. Way, Catalogue of Antiquities…in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London (1847), II, no. 41.

Henry Baker, F.R.S. (1698–1744), naturalist and poet, formed an extensive natural history and antiquarian collection which was sold by auction in 1775.

15 R. P. Wright and I. A. Richmond, Catalogue of the Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester (1955), 57, pl. xlviib.

16 Latham Drawings, Manchester Public Libraries, MS f.741 L25 Folio 118. Mr S. Briggs kindly drew my attention to this sketch and provided a photograph.

17 W. T. Watkin, Roman Cheshire (1886), 201.

18 The Cambridgeshire Record Office kindly provided the following information: Thomas Hopkins was born in 1776 or 1777 and moved to Linton from Tunbridge in 1798 with his wife Grace Hopkins. He was the Pastor of the Congregational Chapel in Linton, though like other Independent Ministers he probably covered several parishes. He died in 1839, his wife in 1815. The record office has no information on Mrs Dormer of Myrtle Hill.

19 op. cit. (note 6), 332.

20 op. cit. (note 17), 202.

21 But see F. H. Williams, Synopsis of the Roman Inscriptions of Chester… (1886), 58–9, who noted that this and other sculptured and inscribed slates from Chester were ‘…probably Silurian, and obtained from North Wales.’ I am grateful to Dr G. Lloyd-Morgan for this reference and for other information.

22 Two milestones (RIB 2265, 2266) from Rhiwiau – Uchaf Farm, near Llanfairfechan are thought to have derived from this deposit (Sedgley, J. P., The Roman Milestones of Britain, B.A.R. 18 (1975), 8, 33, nos. 51–2). One is dated to the years A.D. 120–121, the other to the period A.D. 198–209. (British Museum reg. nos. PRB 1883 7–25 1–2).Google Scholar

23 e.g. RIB 465, 510, etc.

24 See Daremberg, C. and Saglio, E., Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, II (1896), 1585 ff.Google Scholar

25 Loeb Classical Library Juvenal and Persius (1918), 174–5.

26 RIB 2139. The largest and most ornate of the 20 known examples (National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh).

27 L. Robert, Les Gladiateurs dans I'Orient Grec (1940), nos. 27, 46, 209, 227.

28 Koepp, F., Germania Romana III (1926), 52, I, Taf. xxxvi, I.Google Scholar

29 e.g. op. cit. (note 27), no. 27, from Apri.

30 Unfortunately, it has not proved possible to pinpoint the discovery more precisely than Fleshmongers Lane, east side. The original account records the find as being made during the digging of foundations for a. house belonging to John Philpott in Fleshmongers Lane. However, details kindly supplied by the Chester Record Office (Ref. AB/4 f. 96) indicate that Philpott had two houses in Fleshmongers Lane, neither of which can be related to the modern street plan. On Lavaux's plan of Chester (A. de Lavaux, Plan of the City and Castle of Chester (1745)), Flshmonger's Lane is shown as the street running approximately north—south between Eastgate Street and Pepper Street, while the continuation southwards was named Newgate Street. Later Fleshmongers Lane was re-named Newgate Street too. It now lies mostly beneath the Grosvenor-Laing shopping precinct. All that is known for certain, then, is that the relief was found between the East Gate and the south-east corner of the fortress, just within the defences.

Lawson's positioning on his map of 1928 (Lawson, P. H., Journ. Chester Arch. Soc. xxvii (1928), 176, xliv, pl. xxvii) is an approximation only.Google Scholar

31 At present, however, the closest known burials on the east side of the fortress are at Boughton, a mile or so away. I am grateful to Mr D. Petch for this and other information.

32 British Museum, reg. no. GR 1847 4–24 18.

33 This relief, now in the Ashmolean Museum, was found in about 1770 ‘among the ruins of a house at Islington’ (Gough, R., Archaeologia xi (1794), 48–9, pl. ii). It was soon lost but re-appeared in 1879 buried in the Tottenham Court Road. It is thought to have been part of the Arundel collection and to have been brought from Smyrna in the seventeenth century.Google Scholar

34 A. Mau, Pompeii, Its Life and Art (1899), 411–12.

35 Lysons, S., Archaeologia xviii (1817), 210–11, pl. xix, 2.Google Scholar