Part 9

Apart from its findspot, the Lanx is important for its excellent art and for the place which it seems to hold in the history of later Greek art. It is, of course, not Romano-British work; it is purely Greek in all its details and no doubt of Greek workmanship. The deities figured on it have long been a puzzle. They are evidently classical deities; three of them, indeed, are Apollo, Artemis, and Athena. But the identity of the other two figures and the meaning of the whole scene have been much disputed. Roger Gale, the first to attempt its unravelment, suggested in 1735 that it was 'just an assemblage of deities', and at one time I inclined to this view--that we had here merely (let us say) a tea-party at Apollo's; Dr. Drexel, too, wrote to me lately to express the same idea. But I must confess that nearly all the best archaeologists demand a definite mythological identification, and my colleague, Prof. Gardner, suggests a new view--that the scene is the so-called Judgement of Paris. This mythological incident was often depicted in ancient art, and--strange as it may sound--in the later versions Paris was not seldom omitted, Apollo was made arbiter, and the scene was removed from Mount Ida to Delphi. The two hitherto disputable figures are, Prof. Gardner thinks, Hera (seated) and Aphrodite (standing, with a long sceptre). He ascribes the work to the third or early part of the fourth century, and believes that it was made in the Eastern Empire; from the prominence granted to Artemis, he conjectures that Ephesus may have been its origin. But he adds that he would not be sure that the artist of the piece, while copying a Judgement of Paris, was consciously aware of the meaning of the original before him. His views will be published in fuller detail in the Journal of Hellenic Studies.

I am glad, further, to have been able to illustrate this paper by what I believe to be a better illustration of the Lanx than has been published before, and also to set out in more accurate fashion the curious legal history of the object after it was found.

(29) In the new History of Northumberland, issued by the Northumberland County History Committee in vol. x (edited by Mr. H. H. Craster, Newcastle, 1914, pp. 455-522) I have given a long account of the known Roman remains in Corbridge parish. These are the settlement of Corstopitum, a small stretch of Roman road and another of the Roman Wall, and the fort of Halton (Hunnum) on the Wall. The account is necessarily historical rather than archaeological; it tries to sum up the finds and estimate their historical bearing, and it also catalogues all the inscribed and sculptured stones found at Corbridge and Halton, with the 'literature' relating to them. Mr. Knowles contributes a plan of the Corbridge excavations to the end of 1912.

(30) The Corbridge excavations of 1913 are described by Mr. R. H. Forster, who was in personal charge of the work, Mr. W. H. Knowles, and myself, in Archaeologia Aeliana (third series, 1914, xi. 279-310); see also a short account by myself in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London (xxvi. 185-9). The discoveries were comparatively few; they comprised some ill-preserved and mostly insignificant buildings on the north side of the site, some ditches, and a stretch of the road leading to the north (Dere Street). Among small objects were an interesting but imperfect altar to 'Panthea ...', a bronze 'balsamarium' showing a puzzling variety of barbarian's head, and another piece of the Corbridge grey applique ware. A short account of the excavations of 1914 (see above, p. 9) is contained in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (xx. 343).

(31) The Proceedings of the Berwick Naturalists' Club (vol. xxxii, part 2) print an agreeable paper by Mr. James Curle, describing Dere Street and some Roman posts on it between Tyne and Tweed.

Notts.

(32) About ten miles east from Nottingham, and a mile south of the village of East Bridgeford, the Fosse-way crosses a Roman site which has usually been identified with the Margidunum of the Antonine Itinerary. Lately excavation has been attempted, and the Antiquary of December 1914 contains an interesting account of the results attained up to the end of 1913, with some illustrations. A very broad earthwork and ditch surround an area of 7 acres, rhomboidal in shape (fig. 23). In this area the excavators, Drs. Felix Oswald and T. D. Pryce, have turned up floor-tesserae, roof-slates, flue-tiles, window-glass, painted wall-plaster, potsherds of the first and later centuries, including a black bowl with a well-modelled figure of Mercury in relief, coins ranging down to the end of the fourth century (Eugenius), and other small objects of interest, such as the small seal-box with Late-Celtic enamel, shown in fig. 24. No foundations in situ have yet come to light, but that is doubtless to follow; only a tiny part of the whole area has, as yet, been touched. Margidunum may have begun as a fort coeval with the Fosse-way, which (if I am right) dates from the earliest years of the Roman Conquest. Whether any of the first-century potsherds as yet found there can be assigned to these years (say A.D. 45-75) is not clear. But the excavations plainly deserve to be continued.

Shropshire

(33) Mr. Bushe-Fox's second Report on his excavations at Wroxeter (Reports of the Research Committee of the London Society of Antiquaries, No. II, Oxford, 1914) deserves all the praise accorded to his first Report. I can only repeat what I said of that; it is an excellent description, full and careful, minute in its account of the smaller finds, lavishly illustrated, admirably printed, and sold for half a crown. The finds which it enumerates in detail I summarized in my Report for 1913, pp. 19-20--the temple with its interesting Italian plan, the fragments of sculpture which seem to belong to it, the crowd of small objects, the masses of Samian (indefatigably recorded), the 528 coins; all combine to make up an admirable pamphlet.

(The measuring staff to the right stands in the cella, the floor of which is slightly higher than that of the portico to the left of it)]

I will venture a suggestion on the temple. This, as I pointed out last year, is on the Italian, not on the Celto-Roman plan. But one item is not quite clear in it. All ordinary classical temples stood on podia or platforms which raised them above the surrounding surface at least to some small extent. Mr. Bushe-Fox speaks of a podium to the Wroxeter temple. But it appears that he does not mean a podium, as generally understood. The masonry which he denotes by that term was, in his opinion, buried underground and merely foundation. The floor of the portico of the temple (he says) was about level with the floor of the court which surrounded the temple; the floor of the cella, though higher, was but a trifle higher (see figs. 26, 27). This view needs more reflection than he has given it in his rather brief account. No doubt a temple in a Celtic land might have been built on a classical plan, though without a classical podium. But it is not what one would most expect. Nor do I feel sure that it was actually done at Wroxeter in this case. The walls which Mr. Bushe-Fox explains as the foundations of the temple are quite needlessly good masonry for foundations never meant to be seen; this will be plain from figs. 27, 28, which I reproduce by permission from his Report. Further, as fig. 26 (from the same source) shows, there was outside the base of this masonry a level cobbled surface, for which no structural reason is to be found. This, one may guess, was a pavement at the original ground-level when the temple was first erected; from this, steps presumably led up to the floor of the portico and cella. The 'podium', then, was at first a real podium. Later, the ground-level rose, and the walls of the podium were buried.

Somerset

(34) In his handsome volume, Wookey Hole, its caves and cave-dwellers (London, 1914), Mr. H. E. Balch collects for general antiquarian readers the results of his long exploration of this Mendip cave; some of these results were noted in my Report for 1913, p. 47. The cave, as a whole, contained--besides copious prehistoric remains--two well-defined Roman layers, with many potsherds, including a little Samian and one Samian stamp given as PIIR PIIT OFII (apparently a new variety of Perpetuus), broken glass, a few fibulae and other bronze and iron objects, and 106 coins. These coins are:--1 Republican (124-103 B.C., Marcia), 1 Vespasian, 1 Titus, 1 Trajan, 2 Hadrian, 2 Pius; then, 3 Gallienus, 1 Salonina, 1 Carausius, 2 Chlorus, 1 Theodora, 6 Constantinopolis, 1 Crispus, 4 Constantine II, 4 Magnentius, 4 Constantius II, with 20 Valentinian I, 14 Valens, 21 Gratian, 7 Valentinian II, and 6 illegible. Just two-thirds of the coins are later than A.D. 364; they may be set beside the late hoard found at Wookey Hole in 1852, which Mr. Balch might well have mentioned. Plainly, the later Roman layer in the cave belongs to the end of the fourth century. The date of the other layer is harder to fix, since we are not told how the coins and potsherds were distributed between the layers. Probably the cave was long inhabited casually but in the troubled time of the latest Empire became a place of refuge or otherwise attracted more numerous occupants. That, if true, is a more interesting result that Mr. Balch realizes. For in general the cave-life of Roman Britain belonged to the first two or three centuries of our era; it is only rarely, and mostly in the west country, that the caves contain among their Roman relics objects of the late fourth century (see Victoria Hist. Derbyshire, i. 233-42). I must add that Mr. Balch repeats on pp. 57-8 the error about the significance of the Republican coin which was noted in my Report for 1915.

(35) The Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society for 1913 (vol. lix, Taunton, 1914) record small Roman finds at Bratton and Barrington (part i, pp. 24, 65, 76, and part ii, p. 79), and describe in detail Mr. Gray's trial excavations at Cadbury Castle. Cadbury, it seems, was occupied mainly in the Celtic period, before the Roman conquest.

(36) A little light is thrown on two Somerset 'villas' in Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset (xiv. 1914). (a) Skinner in 1818 excavated a 'villa' near Camerton which he recorded in his manuscripts. (British Mus. Add. 33659, &c.) and which I described in print in the Victoria History of Somerset (i. 315). His account did not, however, enable one to fix the precise site; he said only that it stood south of a certain Ridgeway and next to a field called Chessils. Mr. E. J. Holmroyd has now, with the aid of tithe maps, discovered a field called Chessils in the north of Midsomer Norton parish, about a mile east of Paulton village, at the point where a lane called in the Ordnance Survey 'Coldharbour Lane', which runs north and south, cuts a lane running east and west from Camerton to Paulton; this latter lane keeps to high ground and must be Skinner's Ridgeway. In Chessils and in adjoining fields called Cornwell, just 525 feet above sea-level, he has, further, actually found Roman potsherds, tiles, and rough tesserae. This, as he says (Notes and Queries, xiv. 5, and in a letter to me) will be the site of Skinner's 'villa.' (b) In the same publication (p. 122) I have pointed out that the Parish Award (1798) of Chedzoy, near Bridgwater, contains a field-name Chesters. This, as the Rector of Chedzoy attests, is still in use there, as the name of an orchard on the Manor Farm, just west of Chedzoy village. According to older statements, a hypocaust was long ago found in 'Slapeland', and Slapeland too lies west of Chedzoy village (see Vict. Hist. Somerset, i. 359). Two bits of slender evidence seem thus to confirm each other, although no actual Roman remains have been noted at Chedzoy lately.

(37) In the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London (xxvi. 137-44) Mr. A. Bulleid describes, with illustrations, some excavations which he lately made in the marshes north of the Polden Hills, near Cossington and Chilton. Here are curious mounds which have often been taken for some kind of potteries, and are so explained by Mr. Bulleid; many of these mounds were excavated about a hundred years ago, and Mr. Bulleid has now dug into others. His results are not very conclusive, but they seem to imply that the mounds, whatever they were, were not used for pottery making, since among many relics of various sorts no 'wasters' have been found. See further, for an account of the finds in this region, Victoria Hist. of Somerset, i. 351-3.

Surrey

(38) The Surrey Archaelogical Collections (vol. xxvi) note various small Roman finds--Roman bricks in the walls of Fetcham Church, possibly Roman plaster at Stoke D'Abernon Church (p. 123), some thirty coins and Roman urns and glass from Ewell (pp. 135, 148), and an urn from Camberwell (p. 149). The same journal (vol. xxvii, p. 155) notes the discovery, not hitherto recorded, of over 100 coins of A.D. 296-312 in an urn dug up in 1904 at Normandy Manor Nurseries, near Guildford.

(39) A Schedule of Antiquities in the County of Surrey, by Mr. P. M. Johnston (Guildford, 1913), seems intended for students of mediaeval and modern antiquities, and says little about Roman remains; it has no index and cites no authorities.

Sussex

(40) A Roman well has been examined near Ham Farm, between Hassocks railway station and Hurstpierpoint. It was 38 feet deep, the upper part round and lined with local blue clay, the lower part square and lined with stout oak planks. The only object recorded from it is a 'first century vase', taken out at half-way down, which suggests that the well collapsed at an early date. Another well, flint-lined, was noted near but not explored; Roman potsherds were picked up not far off (Sussex Archaeological Collections, lvi. 197). The remains probably belong to a farm detected close by in 1857 (S. A. C. xiv. 178). Traces of Roman civilized life are comparatively common in this neighbourhood.

(41) Mr. R. G. Roberts' volume, The Place-names of Sussex (Cambridge University Press, 1914), much resembles the Derbyshire monograph noted above (No. 7). Its selection of place-names is about as limited and its neglect of all but purely phonetic considerations is as marked. Names such as Cold Waltham (beside a Roman road), Adur, Lavant, Arun, Chanctonbury, Mount Caburn, do not find a place in it. From a full criticism by Dr. H. Bradley in the English Historical Review (xxx. 161-6) one would infer that its philology, too, is by no means satisfactory.

Westmorland

(42) The Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society (xiv. 433-65) contain the first Report, by Mr. R. G. Collingwood, of the excavation of the Roman fort at Borrans Ring, near Ambleside, covering the period from August 1913 to April 1914. It is an excellent piece of description and well illustrated; due attention is given to the small objects; the whole is scholarly and satisfactory. It is perhaps as well to add that one or two details first found in April 1914 were further explored in the following August, and some corrections were obtained which will be published in the second Report. For the rest see above, p. 10.

Wilts.

(43) I have contributed to the Proceedings of the Bath and District Branch of the Somersetshire Archaeological Society and Natural History for 1914 (p. 50) a note on the relief of Diana found at Nettleton Scrub, to much the same effect as the paragraph on this sculpture in my Report for 1913 (p. 49).

(44) The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London (xxvi. 209) contain a note by Mr. E. H. Binney on Roman remains on the known Roman site, Nythe Farm, about three miles east of Swindon.

Worcestershire