This study traces representations of the Greek and Roman gods as they percolated through the Roman diocese of Britannia after its conquest in the first century CE. It details special interest in the figures of Minerva, Mars, Medusa, Hercules, Mercury and Cupid. Virtually all our evidence for knowledge of the classical gods in Roman Britain appears in the plastic arts or other recovered artifacts of material culture: altars, figurines, jewelry, mosaics, sculpture, tools, votive offerings and various portable objects, sometimes including inscriptions. Pottery and coins are excluded from consideration, since these were ubiquitous items, manufactured or minted in great numbers for general use and circulation, and thus not really diagnostic of religious devotion or belief. Turner analyzes 1,900 pieces of evidence to assess how classical divinities resonated with the inhabitants of Roman Britain, whether they were native Britons, provincial rulers or foreign soldiers, many of whom chose to stay after their retirement from the army. The author charts and contemplates the appeal of the Mediterranean gods to inhabitants of a distant island in the North Atlantic, where people looked to them for different kinds of comfort and protection.
Turner includes numerous ordinary objects—plain bone hairpins, tools, curse tablets, and copper-alloy or ceramic figurines—which reveal how completely the Greco-Roman gods had entered the lives of Romano-British individuals, “be they aristocrat, artisan, farmer, merchant, soldier, or servant” (183). He argues that the classical gods had also become functionally more capacious and multicompetent in their new homeland, each one now available for a broader range of benefactions. Their divinity is what mattered most and also their Romanness: these gods were clearly powerful as the supernal patrons of a people who had conquered much of the known world.
The whole volume is a compendium of reports, maps and charts on each mythic figure represented, including numbers of artifacts, their find locations and contexts, as well as their prevalence over time. The book also surveys the key “vectors” that enabled the transmission of religious artifacts and ideas throughout what eventually became the five imperial provinces of Roman Britain. The author visually summarizes his diverse data set of artifacts as a “heat map” in Figure 1, marking find sites in and between 14 forts and towns linked by the Roman road network. The hottest spot of all appears far to the north on Hadrian’s Wall between the forts of Vindolanda in the west and Coria [Corbridge] in the east with two warmish regions in the south, one between Londinium and Verulamium [St Albans], the other between Aquae Sulis [Bath] and Corinium [Cirencester].
The first case study is that of Minerva, thought to be an old Etruscan goddess partly modeled on Athena, who is distinguished by her expert knowledge and practical intelligence in healing arts and other specialized crafts. Her protective spirit is signified by a high-crested helmet, spear and shield often bearing a gorgon’s head to turn away evil from her devotees. An image of Minerva appears on over 225 items, a frequency similar to that of Mercury, Mars or Jupiter, over a quarter of which are her copper-alloy head on tool handles designed for delicate work like “mixing paint or medicines, for shaving, or in surgical or dental procedures” (1). In Britain, Minerva became the go-to goddess for the healing of physical ailments, female fertility and the taking of vengeance upon enemies or other malefactors. She was a kind of “enforcer,” since “only in Britain did [Minerva] gain an association with judicial matters, as evidenced from the curse tablets at Bath” (16). Though the author does not observe this possibility, it seems that the figure of Minerva acquired some of the functionality of native British female divinities like Rígantona “Divine Queen” whose name survives in Rhiannon of medieval Welsh tradition, a preternatural “sovereignty maiden” who could bring both wise governance and dynastic continuity to mortal leaders, but also discipline them for moral failings or injustice.
Next is Mars, progenitor of the Roman people and sponsor of their military conquests. His images in Britain are “classical” rather than realistic: he is not armed in the manner of a contemporary Roman legionary with rectangular scutum and bowl-shaped galea, but rather with a rounded shield and helmet in the Corinthian style, making his representation distinctive. Around 215 objects represent Mars, over a third of which are carved on altars with inscriptions revealing that he was not just honored as the patron of military victory, but also of the agricultural and health concerns of a rural population, including army veterans retiring to farms of their own. Other deities—Jupiter, Victory and Fortuna—also appear in military contexts, as does Hercules, a hero (originally mortal) honored by Roman soldiers for his toughness and stoicism as much as his strength, who is here most commonly depicted as a figure of ordinary build rather than a muscleman capable of mastering the Nemean lion or giant Antaeus.
Medusa is a more of a monster, of course, not an Olympian deity, but she became a well-known figure throughout Britannia, often appearing on the aegis or shield of Minerva. Medusa was honored in no temples, festivals or altars, but is found on personal objects like jet pendants, many of which were in female burials, suggesting that Romano-British women trusted the gorgon to protect them from harm both in this life and the next. Medusa is never “petitioned with votive messages or requests as with other deities or divine heroes,” suggesting that the mere depiction of her severed head, snaky hair or staring eyes was all that was necessary to activate her apotropaic power (46). Once again, although not mentioned by the author, this insular appropriation of the Mediterranean Medusa suggests her association with native British hags or witches, the gwragedd Annwn “women of the Otherworld”, furies who could be deadly to the arrogant or presumptuous.
Mercury was the single most popular classical deity in Roman Britain with the highest number of recovered representations, supporting Caesar’s claim that this god of commerce was the most attractive Roman divinity to the Brittonic-speaking Gauls as well (De bello Gallico, bk 6, ch 17). He was linked in inscriptions, statues and stone reliefs, like those at Glevum [Gloucester] and Aquae Sulis [Bath], with Rosmerta “Great Giver”, a native Celtic goddess of material abundance frequently bearing a cornucopia,
Cupid, the personification of erotic love, ranks fifth in popularity among the classical gods in Roman Britain. Like Medusa, Cupid was never invoked in cult worship, but rather appears in more social or domestic contexts like bathhouse walls, dining room mosaics, lamp ornaments, gems and figurines.
Turner concludes his survey with an itemization of the means by which figures of classical mythology migrated throughout Roman Britain, the main one being representations on monumental temples and other official stone buildings as these were erected from town to town under an imperial administration which also facilitated a rising tide of economic exchange. Thus, Mercury’s role as the patron of the burgeoning commerce and growing prosperity of the Roman provinces of Britain became “a conduit for his own transmission” (174), just as the military occupation of the diocese ensured the widespread dissemination of the cult of Mars. Assemblages of gods in mini-pantheons also appear in the plastic arts, not perhaps reflecting religious devotion per se, Turner suggests, but rather the owner’s desire to “display romanitas” (119), hoping to attract the advantages that assimilation to Roman elite culture would bring.
After his survey of these iconic artifacts over almost four centuries, the author reaches the unobjectionable conclusion “that classical mythology in Roman Britain was never static or passive, but organic and interactive, easily adapted to better match the requirements of anyone who sought to engage with it” (184). Tacitus details how the Romans did their best to stamp out Druidism, the native religion of pre-Roman Britain, but offered in its place a pantheon of divinities who could substitute for the ancient gods of the island or join with them in their various traditional functions. This study’s strength is its detailed assessment of physical evidence for familiarity with the Greco-Roman gods in the island. The next step would be a deeper consideration of how these divinities interacted with the worship of the native gods and goddesses of pre-Roman Celtic religion or influenced how they were remembered in later Brittonic tradition. Also unaddressed in this study is the impact of the other Mediterranean mythology that had “legs” in Roman Britain, that is, the steady advance of Christianity after the Edict of Milan in 313, a movement which left the Romano-Britons devotees neither of the classical divinities nor of own native pantheons, but rather adherents of the new Triune God. They turned to martyrs like Alban with his healing spring at Verulamium or Julius and Aaron with their incubation shrines near Isca Augusta [Caerleon], saints who took over the curative, protective and apotropaic functions of the older deities. Nonetheless, this study is a fine summary of the eager reception of gods who were soon to be abandoned by their Romano-British adherents.