Religion in Roman Britain

Mr Martin Henig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135782757
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Apart from Christianity and the Oriental Cults, religion in Roman Britain is often discussed as though it remained basically Celtic in belief and practice, under a thin veneer of Roman influence. Using a wide range of archaeological evidence, Dr Henig shows that the Roman element in religion was of much greater significance and that the natural Roman veneration for the gods found meaningful expression even in the formal rituals practised in the public temples of Britain.

1
The Celtic World

I shall not speak of the ancient errors, common to all races, that bound the whole of humanity fast before the coming of Christ in the flesh. I shall not enumerate the devilish monstrosities of my land, numerous almost as those that plagued Egypt, some of which we can see today, stark as ever, inside or outside deserted city walls: outlines still ugly, faces still grim. I shall not name the mountains and hills and rivers, once so pernicious, now useful for human needs, on which, in those days, a blind people heaped divine honours. (Gildas, De Excid. Brit. 4, 2–3)¹

A ‘Natural Religion’

In this tantalising passage Gildas alludes to Romano-British paganism while at the same time refusing to tell us anything about it. Neither he nor his readers were interested. However, the connection implied between natural features and the divine world is certainly authentic. Place-name evidence shows that rivers in particular sometimes received their names before a Celtic language was spoken here; the Thames may have been called the Thames in the Bronze Age or earlier. Religious dedications of the Roman period show that such personified natural features were worshipped; thus Verbeia (whose name means ‘winding river’) is attested as a goddess on a Roman altar at Ilkley in Yorkshire. Apart from such comparatively late evidence, the great number of metal finds of Bronze Age and Iron Age date from the Thames and other rivers and bogs suggests that such places were holy. It may also be noted that the ostentatious disposal of precious objects in dedications to the gods was an ideal way by which men could demonstrate their wealth and so enhance their prestige.²

Strabo writes of a great gold treasure dedicated to the gods near Toulouse, but only some of it was kept in temple-enclosures. The rest lay at the bottom of sacred lakes (Strabo IV, 1, 13). The earth itself as well as water was sacred—shafts sunk into the ground are known from the Bronze Age. Most, however, are of Iron Age or Roman date. The evidence of sacrifices in these pits, coupled sometimes with the presence of great timbers which could symbolise the sexual penetration of the earth and thus constitute fertility magic, confirms that these are more than mere wells, though doubtless wells too were venerated as they have been in more recent times.³

Much of early Britain was forested, and these murky groves were also the resorts of divine powers. The word nemeton, related to the Greek temenos, means a grove, generally by implication a sacred grove. Arnemetia, whose cult centre was Buxton, means ‘she who dwelt over against the sacred grove’, and was apparently the goddess of the springs of this spa⁴ Mars Rigonementos at Nettleham, Lincolnshire also presided over a grove.⁵ Such evidence may be supplemented by literary accounts. Lucan’s account of the grove near Massilia (Marseilles) ‘untouched by men’s hands from antiquity’ where the gods were ‘venerated with strange rites, the altars piled high with hideous offerings, and every tree was sprinkled with human blood’ (Pharsalia III, 399ff) is hardly a reliable eye-witness record but it does attest the rough and unwholesome aspect of native religion seen by an outsider. In Britain the groves on Anglesey which were attacked by the army of Suetonius Paullinus (Tacitus, Annals XIV, 30) and the grove of Andate (or Andraste) where Boudica’s Britons tortured and, in effect, sacrificed prisoners (Dio Cassius, epitome of book LXII, 7) conjure up the same feelings of repulsion and mystery.

Alongside veneration of natural features, men would have been impressed by the animals and birds which inhabited the countryside. Their attributes, the swiftness of the deer, the strength of the boar, the high-soaring flight of the eagle suggested divine strength. The migration of birds, perhaps to the realm of the gods, was a great puzzle. Animals were endowed with divine powers, and frequently appear in the post-Roman insular Celtic literature as beings of considerable understanding. Thus the rivalry between two supernatural bulls forms a theme in the Irish epic, the Táin Bo Cuálgne. Amongst divine boars are Twrch Trwyth of Welsh legend and Torc Forbartach in an Irish story. Some tribal names, the Epidii (horse people) in Kintyre, Lugi (raven people) in Sutherland and perhaps the Orci (boar-people) of the Orkney Islands, suggest totemism⁶ and the fact that Caesar records that the goose, cock and hare were sacred to the Britons (BG V, 12), whether or not it was a widespread taboo, shows us that the religion of the Celts was a ‘natural religion’.

Although it was so close to nature, it was not without art and philosophy. Celtic art is frequently abstract but, amongst the flowing curves, masks of men and animals appear. Those of beasts include boars, horses and bulls. Whether these ornament objects of daily use amongst the tribal aristocracy (e.g. shields or buckets) or coins handed out by warlords to their followers, the image always projects a strong idea of the power and beneficence of nature. The horns of bulls on iron fire-dogs and on bronze bucket mounts are emphasised by knobbed ends which may denote the fecundity of the creature. The horns, which are probably an original feature of the Torrs Chamfron (similar horns are shown rising from the head of a winged horse on a coin of Tasciovanus), have the same meaning.⁷

It is startling to discover that human heads are treated no differently from the heads of animals. As the great art historian, Paul Jacobsthal wrote, ‘The Celts created Man in the image of Beast’.⁸ We are so used to naturalistic portraiture that the Celtic mask with its almond-shaped eyes, long nose and slit mouth seems shocking in its complete lack of emotional finesse. The head is a totem of power; it could be severed from an enemy in battle and yet retain life independent of the body. The Welsh hero Bran actually asked his followers to decapitate him and his head became a talisman with the ability to foretell the future. Thus the heads ornamenting the Aylesford, Baldock and Marlborough buckets are not there by chance, but helped to give potency to the wine or beer these splendid feasting bowls contained. Sometimes the human head was provided with horns, notably on the obverse of a silver coin found near Petersfield, Hampshire. Here a facing head is surmounted with antlers ‘at the burgeoning velvet stage’. Is this the same god Cernunnos shown on a Roman relief from Paris or has it some other meaning? The wheel between the horns belong to Taranis who is certainly depicted in Roman period art from the Celtic provinces (Chapter 3) and is a solar symbol. Does the coin show two deities conflated or a priest wearing a headdress containing horns and a wheel, or is it merely a conjunction of fortunate symbols? We cannot be sure, but certainly the combination of such powerful elements must have been seen as auspicious. Incidentally, figures who may be priests are associated with heads on coins of Cunobelinus (perhaps adapted from a Roman prototype, Perseus with the mask of Medusa) and also of Verica.⁹

Although the head-cult seem to belong especially to the world of the Celts, it should be emphasised that other ancient peoples including the Greeks and Romans saw the head as the seat of power and energy. The Roman imagines, portrait-busts, belong to the same body of belief as does the prodigy of the head of Olus appearing on the site of the Roman Capitol and talking in early Roman legend.¹⁰

The Organisation of Ritual—The Druids

Our knowledge of how religious ritual was organised in Iron Age Britain is very deficient. Religious officials—masters of sacred lore—commonsense tells us, must always have existed. Certainly it is hard to see how the great stone circles, surely temples, of western Britain like Avebury (c 2600 BC) and Stonehenge (c 2100 BC) operated without such men. However, there is very little evidence, apart from the continuity or at least re-use of a site after a gap of years or even of centuries as at Uley in Gloucestershire or Maiden Castle in Dorset, to substantiate links with the Bronze Age or Neolithic. As Aubrey Burl writes, ‘by the Iron Age…few people came to Avebury’ and ‘A Roman visitor to Avebury would have found it abandoned’.¹¹ These sites have been connected with the Druids from at least the eighteenth century, but attractive as might appear to be the connection between our most impressive prehistoric monuments and the one group of pre-Roman holy men all our authorities agree existed, it cannot be substantiated.

Who were the Druids? They appear in many sources as teachers and judges rather than as priests, though they are sometimes said to have been present at sacrifices. The Elder Pliny does write of them as priests and it is from him that we learn that they cut mistletoe from oaks with a golden sickle (NH XVI, 251); a story which gripped public imagination from the time of John Aubrey. A strigil of Roman date from Reculver, Kent (1) led him to remark: ‘Behold the golden sickle with which the Druids used to cut mistletoe.’¹².

If this occasions knowing smiles today the strigil deserves to be illustrated as a reminder that any study of a past culture must be at best interpretative reconstruction. For Nora Chadwick, the Druids were philosophers rather than priests.¹³ She accepts the tradition of Posidonius followed by Caesar and it must be admitted that both the Greek explorer of the second century BC and the Roman general a century later were in a position to meet Druids and perhaps (through interpreters) to speak to them. When Caesar says that ‘the Druidic doctrine is believed to have been found existing in Britain and thence imported into Gaul’ (BG VI, 13) he may be wrong—Pliny writing after Gaul had been subdued and while

1 The bronze strigil from Reculver, Kent. Length 28.5 cm. Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology, Cambridge

Britain itself was being conquered sees it as having been taken there from Gaul (NH XXX, 13)—but we must accept the fact that British Druidism already seemed old in Caesar’s day. He continues, ‘even today those who want to make a profound study of it generally go to Britain for the purpose’. There were, then, cross-channel pilgrimages to Britain.

Even if the Druids were not strictly speaking a priestly caste, it is doubtful whether the exact distinction between Druids and priests would have been apparent to the Roman outsider. As we shall see in Roman sacrifices, the officiant and the man who struck the blow that killed the animal had different functions. Druids may not have slaughtered animals (or people) themselves—but the Romans held them responsible for human sacrifices—drowning, hanging, stabbing and burning are the means cited by ancient writers.¹⁴ Presumably the Druids confirmed that human lives were demanded by the gods, Esus, Taranis, Teutates and others, and this formed part of the reason why they were opposed by the Romans (see Chapter 9).

Temples and Holy Places

Specific sites must have had their own individual rites and ceremonies, for the power of Celtic deities seems to have been very localised. Post-Conquest inscriptions mention names which should go back into the Iron Age, although that does not necessarily mean that we can use Roman-period evidence to understand the cults of Sulis, Cunomaglos, Cocidius or Belatucadrus in earlier times.¹⁵

Apart from the archaeological evidence, our knowledge of Celtic religion is very sketchy. That there was a calendar of festivals is clear from Irish sources and may be presumed from a bronze tablet found at Coligny in France inscribed with lucky and unlucky days.¹⁶ Augury, a practice shared with the Romans, follows from the deep sympathy felt with the natural world (Diodorus V, 31; Cicero, De Divinatione 41). Groves are mentioned and in Gaul at the mouth of the Loire a temple served by priestesses (Strabo IV, 4, 3) implies that women—apart from the redoubtable Boudica— could have a special relationship with the gods.

Archaeological discoveries which relate directly to pre-Roman Celtic religion are still comparatively sparse and difficult to interpret. This is because Celtic temples were timber-built compared to the Roman structures of stone which replaced them. Even where the quantity of early finds is so great that the presence of an Iron Age shrine is certain, the massive nature of Roman building activity will frequently have destroyed, or badly damaged the earlier structure. Harlow, with a very extensive coin-list but no Iron Age shrine to go with it, and perhaps Bath on the grounds that the Celts could not have avoided venerating Sulis, the spirit of the spring, are cases in point.¹⁷

Where temples have been excavated, and the circular shrines at Hayling Island and Maiden Castle come to mind, they are really no more than large huts of ‘Little Woodbury’ type.¹⁸ At Gallows Hill, Thetford, a group of five huts has been excavated within a series of three rectangular ditches. Although the site has been interpreted as ‘Boudica’s Palace’, the extraordinary fact that the huts have two opposed entrances, which would create through draughts if they were occupied, is a strong argument against explaining them as dwellings. Surely they could be shrines, perhaps predecessors of the Temple of Faunus situated only a few yards away and destroyed when a factory was built, (although it must be emphasised that the Iron Age site ceased to be used after about AD 60 and was probably deliberately dismantled by the Romans in the aftermath of the Boudican uprising).¹⁹

Large huts (bruidne) belonging to the gods of the Other World are mentioned in the Irish sources. Each of these hostelries contained a cauldron which could feed any number of guests.²⁰ A supernatural house with a cauldron of ale and food (pork and beef) left for the visitor is mentioned in the Voyage of Mael Duin.²¹ Its walls were hung with gold and silver brooches, torcs and swords with hilts of precious metal. These recall the type of offering which might be left in a temple, but it may be noted that silver was little used in Ireland before the Viking period and in particular the type of sword described in this and other Irish tales seems to be Viking. On balance I think we can still use Irish legend as a ‘window on the Iron Age’ but we should be aware that there are problems of interpretation.²² More idiosyncratic in a land where the predominant tradition of building was the circular hut is the rectangular temple at Heathrow, Middlesex which with its central cult-room (cella) and porch is sometimes seen as the ancestor to the Romano- Celtic temple. Other rectangular buildings, generally very small, at Danebury, South Cadbury and Lancing, are also identified ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• The Illustrations
• Prologue: Uno Itinere Non Potest Pervenire Ad Tam Grande Secretum
• Foreword to the Second Edition
• 1. The Celtic World
• 2. The Roman Gods
• 3. The Romanisation of the Celtic Cults
• 4. The Roman State and Religious Practice
• 5. Mithraism and the Other Eastern Religions
• 6. Religion In Britain: Cult and Social Function
• 7. Religion and Superstition In the Home and In Daily Life
• 8. Religion and Burial Practice
• 9. Religion and Politics
• 10. Adaptation and Change: Pagans and Christians In Late Antiquity
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• References