Celebrating the half-way mark in our Romans Series, Sunday 12 June was a beautiful sunny day for 40 BRLSI members and guests to visit the Roman town of Caerwent and the Roman Legionary Fortress at Caerleon. Leaving Queen Square sharp at 9am, we were met promptly at 10 by the Caerwent Custodian, Mr John Barnard, who started with a detailed description of the house of a prosperous tradesman (ironmonger/blacksmith), conveniently situated beside the broad Roman street at its centre.

Having shown strong resistance to the invading Romans, the Siluri tribe had eventually given way to the inevitable, and finding advantage in accepting the new order, benefitted from the strong economy which grew there. They were even granted their own Order, administered by their local chief. Thus, a little way behind the tradesman’s house we saw the Manor, beyond which were more prosperous properties still, further from the hubbub, briefly uncovered by the TV weekend ‘Time Team’ and as hastily covered over for future generations.

Then came the Forum Basilica (photo) and finally the Temple, later adapted to early Christian use, and impressive walls overlooking the nearby Usk tidal valley, up which Roman seagoing ships used regularly to sail . The afternoon was spent at Caerleon, where a local guide Mr Bob Trett described in great detail the building of the impressive Amphitheatre. Following major archaeological work by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, financed by the Daily Mail, enough survives of this impressive oval structure to give a convincing feel of its original operation.

From there we proceeded to the impressing remains of the Legionary Fortress, with perhaps the best preserved barracks from the Roman Empire, where the crowded conditions for the soldiers, eight to each tiny two-roomed apartment, could be compared to the adjacent capacious and rambling premises reserved for their Centurion. Our visit concluded at the excellent Roman Legionary Museum and garden, and the rains held off until we were boarding the coach. A most rewarding trip.

Illuminating talks
Our Series had started with two illuminating talks on Roman introductions which were critical to the civilisation of our islands, first by Professor Julian Vincent on Roman technology, and later Professor Ian Haynes, of Newcastle, speaking on The Introduction of Writing. Professor Vincent’s presentation focused on several parts of the Roman Empire, particularly on a remarkable group of water-powered flour mills near Barbégal, which milled for the inhabitants of Arles the grain from their cornfields, and also provided irrigation and water for the town - fine examples of Roman skills with stone and machinery, as were many others in Britain.

Professor Haynes entranced us with the introduction of record keeping, with particular focus on wax-covered wooden tablets, which were the basis of communication up and down the Roman command structure. Though their wax has long since disappeared, some 1600 of these tablets have been found near Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall, and are being decrypted with great scholarship by Dr Roger Tomlin and his team, a task so tricky that they groan as each new find comes to light.

The custom of correspondence, and of keeping records and writing generally, was a paradigm shift in human ways in the setting of rules, the keeping of order and justice, the logistics of delivery and storage, and the substance of history. Even religion reared its head, with the inscription of curses on small lead tokens, entrusting the gods with retribution for wrongs of many kinds, such as the theft of wives, and even our favourite trousers and sandals.

Religion featured also in several other talks, such as those by Stephen Bird. Roger Vlitos and Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe. The Romans’ main concern was for order and supplies, and they demonstrated great practicality in securing those goals, particularly in establishing workable relations with the numerous tribes they conquered. They were happy for the British peoples to prosper in their re-ordered world, such as we saw at Caerwent, and a broad-minded attitude to gods was part and parcel of that approach. Whilst honouring their own gods, they were happy to find comparable gods honoured by the Celts, and often invented combined names for these deities. Sulis Minerva was an excellent example in Bath, as was the espousal of Mercury to the Celtic goddess Rosmerta, as recorded in joint sculptures in Bath and in Gaul.

Dr Lunn-Rockliffe’s scholarly presentation described the vicious demonization by the early Christians in Rome of statues of the Roman gods, whom they saw as malevolent repositories of the devil, and whose effigies they decapitated and destroyed, the headless stone or bronze torsos being intended by them to be seen as representative of a bleeding beheaded criminal, but even these early Roman Christians softened their stance in recognition of some of the fine sculptural achievements, whose heritage they felt should not be lost.

Highlights
Two highlights of this Series, by Stephen Bird and Stephen Clews, described the town of Bath as it might be seen as a holiday and retirement destination in Roman times, the reasons why people came, and the huge variety of countries within the Empire, from which they came, often as legionary soldiers, who after long service, would acquire Roman citizenship for themselves and their families. At the centre most Roman towns, including ours, were the baths, and Stephen Clews gave us a wonderful journey amongst some of the finer examples, particularly in North Africa.

The far reaches of the Empire had been well-described by author Philip Parker, speaking of his recent book about the Empire borderlands from Britain to the Danube, Turkey, Palestine and North Africa, which in the late days of the Empire, tended to hold the political limelight, as malcontent generals sought to respond to the political vacuum at the centre, and themselves ‘take the purple’ as Emperor. His short talk, part of the Bath Literary Festival, was shared by Frank McLynn, whose deeply scholarly biography of that acidulous emperor, Marcus Aurelius, had also just been published.

Our Series has been embellished by some fine poetry about Roman ruins, and about Rome itself, imaginatively twinned to Bath for its seven hills, by Duncan McGibbon in his fine translations and renderings of Sheridan, Dryden and Landor. The second leg of our Roman journey will start with a lecture on 12th July, by Professor Helen King of University of Reading, a renowned authority on health and medicine in antiquity, and with a feast of other presentations, and will conclude with a reappraisal by Dr Brian Young, of Oxford University, of Edward Gibbons’ ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’, a fitting final curtain to our Series, and cause to ponder, perhaps, on essentially who we are.

Martin Sturge