Visitors were offered a series of free activities, including tours with Alison Cooley, workshops on how to read a Roman tombstone with Janie Masséglia, lectures from Keeper of Antiquities Paul Roberts, and Roman object-handling with Hannah Cornwell. The AshLI team members were all helped by postgraduates from Warwick and Oxford Universities, who all showed their dedication to their subject by wearing Roman costume.

Colleagues from the Ashmolean Education department ran a craft session involving inscription-writing attended by more than 200 children, Helen Ackers guided groups around the Roman portraits in the Cast Gallery, and professional Living History expert Tanya Bentham offered Roman story-telling and costume demonstrations. Young actors from Gruffdog Theatre’s production of Julius Caesar also dropped in to give a lunchtime performance in the grand setting of the Randolph Gallery. At the end of a very busy day, with each activity being repeated several times, the museum estimated that around 1500 people had taken part directly in the day’s events.

[See image gallery at blogs.ashmolean.org]

As the shortest day of the year drew near, the Romans crossed their fingers for a kind winter and people from all walks of life made a break in their usual routine to honour the harvest god, Saturn.

The festival of Saturnalia began on the 17^th December and, at its longest, ran for a whole week until 23^rd December. It was a time for communal worship, present-giving, over-eating, decorations, silly hats, party games, and goodwill towards men, especially those divided by the strict Roman rules governing social class.

In our new version of this familiar carol, we’ve been thinking about what Saturnalia must have been like for a Roman slave, and would he would have been looking forward to at this festive time of year. Here it is, sung by some of our friends from the Oxford Classics Faculty. All together now:

VII shouts of “Io!”

The traditional greeting at this time of year was “io, Saturnalia!” (pronounced “Eee-yo” or “Yo”). Romans used it both as a greeting and as a reply, in the same way that we might use “Merry Christmas”, but much louder. It was a cross between a sound of celebration and surprise. Io!

VI sprigs of holly

Many people think of holly and ivy as Christmas greenery, but they were both popular decorations for Saturnalia, used in wreaths and garlands. Holly had a special significance as the sacred plant of Saturn, and small sprigs were given to friends as tokens. Since holly berries are one of the few splashes of colour in the winter, it’s not surprising that they’ve been an unbroken fixture in winter festivals for thousands of years.

V figurines

On 23^rd December, at the end of Saturnalia, the Roman celebrated Sigillaria. This was a day of gift-giving, exchanging expensive presents and small mementos. Even the Roman emperors joined in by giving gifts at Saturnalia (e.g. Augustus, Tiberius, and Vespasian).

Just like today, choosing the right present, and knowing how much to spend, was a tricky business. The 1^st-century poet Martial teased his friend who had “re-gifted” him with all his Saturnalia presents, which were heavy, but cheap:

“At Saturnalia, Umber, you sent me all the presents that the five days had brought you: a dozen three-page writing-tablets and seven toothpicks; these were accompanied by a sponge, a napkin, a cup, four quarts of beans and Picenian olives, and a black flask of Spanish grape juice. And also came little Syrian figs and glazed prunes, and a jar heavy with the weight of Libyan figs. I reckon the presents, which carried by eight huge Syrians, were hardly worth thirty coins in total. How much easier it would have been, without any effort, for a boy to have brought me five pounds of silver!” (Martial. Epigrams VII. 53)

But the traditional gifts, which gave this day its name, were simple figurines made of wax, terracotta or wood (“Sigillaria” literally means “Day of little figures”).

What exactly the figurines were originally intended to represent is difficult to say, and it seems that even the Romans weren’t sure. In the fifth century AD, the writer Macrobius wrote a book on the Saturnalia, in which two characters seem to have different attitudes to Sigillaria figurines. One man argues that they had a religious meaning, and that the figures stood in for the sacrificial victims once demanded by the cult of Saturn (Saturnalia, 1.11.47-9). But the other man argues that they were completely secular, and nothing more than toys for children (Saturnalia, 1.11.1).

But as inexpensive gifts which could be bought in bulk from specialist sigillaria-makers (who set up stalls at this time of year), these are just the kind of thing a slave might have been given to mark the last day of the festival.

IV knucklebones

As another marker that “normal service” had been suspended during Saturnalia, slaves were allowed to gamble. In theory, this festive gambling was never a risk to anyone’s savings, since the traditional stakes were nuts (hence Martial’s memorable advice to Varro to “lose your Saturnalian nuts” in Epigrams V. 30). But open gambling was an important part of the noise and excitement that gave the Saturnalia its special atmosphere.

Even priests joined in with the celebrations. In his poem, Saturnalia, the 2^nd-century poet Lucian has Cronos, a priest of Saturn say “During my week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of frenzied hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water—such are the functions over which I preside.” (Lucian, Saturnalia 1.2)

And even when the Roman Empire was officially Christian, the Saturnalian tradition of gambling was still so strongly associated with this time of year, that the famous Calendar of Philocalus (an illustrated Christian manuscript from AD 354), shows “December” throwing dice:

December, throwing dice, from the 4th century Calendar of Philocalus

So why is our slave singing about knucklebones? The small distinctive bones, usually from a sheep’s foot, were used by both the Greeks and the Romans as dice. The Romans also used the six-sided dice that we still use today, but knucklebones were a traditional alternative. Although roughly rectangular, they had two rounded ends and so could only land on one of four sides. These sides were given the values of 1, 3, 4 and 6 and, just like hands in modern poker, different combinations of values were given special names. A present of knucklebones for our slaves meant that his master was happy for him to take time off and do something he usually wasn’t allowed to do.

III good meals

Saturnalia meant large-scale public feasts at the temples to Saturn, but there was also lots of eating and drinking at home, and slaves were allowed to join in. In one of the amazing handwritten letters from Vindolanda in Roman Britain, we find one slave writing to another about a food order for Saturnalia:

“Regarding the … for the Saturnalia, I ask you, brother, to see to them at a price of 4 or six asses and radishes to the value of not less than ½ denarius.” A letter from one slave to another, from Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall inv. 87.748

Dining was a central part of Saturnalia, and this was often combined with the seasonal tradition of role-reversal, with masters serving their slaves for a change. If a slave was lucky, his master would give him especially good food and drink, and he would be allowed to overindulge in both.

Macrobius seemed to think that it was the successful gathering in of all this food for the winter, with slaves and master working together for the good of the household (Saturnalia, 1.10.22), that was the origin of one of Saturnalia’s most characteristic traditions: time off for the unfree.

II pointy hats

The Romans were very particular about clothing. Certain colours, styles and accessories were often reserved for particular people. During Saturnalia, it was traditional for all men, regardless of status, to wear a pointed felt hat (called a pileus). This wasn’t just a party hat. It was the hat that a male slave began to wear after he had been freed, and had become a libertus (a freedman). Our slave is given two pilei: one for himself, and one to give back to his master. By allowing his slave to wear the pileus, our master was giving his slave a temporary promotion to freedom; and by offering to wear a pileus himself, the (freeborn) master was temporarily reducing himself to the level of the new freedman, a man at the bottom of the social ladder.

This tradition was a clever way of levelling the playing field between the two men, but in fact it was a fantasy. If our slave were ever freed, he would never really be on the same level as a freeborn man like his master. He would be labelled as an ex-slave for the rest of his life, and even if he became successful, wealthy and well-known (as many freedmen did), there would still be elements of Roman life that would be closed to him. Some people in the elite classes would never mix with freedmen. Pliny the Younger, for example, in Letters 7.29, calls successful freedmen “slime and filth”.

Roman naming conventions meant that a freedman took on part of his former master’s name, and in inscriptions we find the tell-tale letter L or LIB for “libertus” (for men) or “liberta” (for women) showing who they had originally belonged to. Even on the tombstones of people who had been free for years, building families and businesses on their own, the inscriptions often still acknowledge that they had once been slaves.

Tombstone for Gaius Caninius Tertius and Caninia Tertia, both of them recorded as C L, liberti of Gaius (Caius). Ashmolean ANChandler.3.31.

There was even a hierarchy among freedmen and freedwomen, depending on who their master had been. One inscription in the Ashmolean Museum belongs to a woman who had once been a slave in the emperor’s household:

Cremation urn of Phleguse, who was AUG LIB – “a freedwoman of the Emperor”. Ashmolean ANChandler.3.78, on display in the Randolph Gallery

… and a chance to pretend that I was free

As well as the pointy freedman-hats, the open gambling and the chance to eat the master’s food, there were other Saturnalia traditions which encouraged slaves and masters to step out of their usual roles.

In an ancient precursor to the “King” at the Feast of Fools (readers of Victor Hugo and Disney fans might remember this from The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Saturnalia allowed a member of a household, even one of the slaves, to be named the “King of Misrule”. In this reversal of the usual order, the male head of the family (the paterfamilias) had to do as he was told, and someone else was allowed to wear the master’s clothes, and make the decisions.

Saturnalia was an important festival for slaves, because it was the only time of the year when they really got to enjoy some time-off. And because Saturnalia was so strongly associated with freedom, Saturn became an important god for slaves. Martial’s Epigrams 3.29, describes a man named Zoilos dedicating his slave-chains to the god to mark his new freedom.

For many Roman citizens, Saturnalia was holiday to brighten up a dark winter. But for many Roman slaves, it was both a chance to step out of their present, and to dream about their future.

Io Saturnalia, everyone, and warm wishes from the AshLI team.

Ashmolean ANChandler.3.3, on permanent loan at Arbeia Museum (South Shields)

In 1672, a Roman altar was found on the south bank of the River Tyne at South Shields. Measuring over a meter in height, it had images of sacrificial tools and a wine-mixing bowl carved into three of its sides, while on top was a dish-shaped hollow (the focus) which once held the fire that sent burnt offerings up to the gods.

On the front of the altar is an 11-line inscription in Latin. In 1683, Martin Lister, the physician and naturalist, made the first attempt at reading it, but was disappointed to find that large sections of it were illegible.

Over the next 300 years, academics and enthusiasts worked on the stone, picking out new words and making corrections, until the text made sense. As you can see in this series of drawings, there were lots of changes along the way:

Comparison of previous readings, assembled by Paul Bidwell. A – Lister (1683); B – Chandler (1763); Bruce (1875); D – Collingwood (1923).

In 2009-10, two scholars from the University of Mainz, Bjorn Brecht and Bruno Kessler, scanned the image surface to reveal the remaining text, allowing Paul Bidwell, Head of Archaeology at Tyne and Wear Museums, to produce a near-complete reading. Today, we think it reads something like this:

New reading, based on a display from Arbeia Museum

Latin:

dis ║ conservato/rib(us) ° pro salu(te) / imp(eratoris) ° C(aesaris) M(arci) Aurêl(i) / Antonini / Aug(usti) Brit(annici) Max(imi) / [[[et imp(eratoris) C(aesaris) P(ubli) Sep(timi) Getae Aug(usti) Brit(annici)]]] /[n(umerus) [?] L[u]g[udun]ens(iu)m /ob reditu(m) ║v(otum) s(olverunt)

English:

‘To the preserving gods for the welfare of Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus Greatest Britannicus and of Imperator Caesar Publius Septimius Geta Augustus Britannicus. The corps of the Lugudunenses fulfilled their vow for their return.’

The Invisible Man

Part of the reason that Lister had found it so difficult to read the inscription was because someone had deliberately erased a large section of it, three-quarters of the way down. He thought that perhaps that it had originally recorded the names of the people who set up the altar. But Roman history suggests a different story.

The first name on the stone, Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus Greatest Britannicus, is the official title of the emperor we know better by his nickname ‘Caracalla’. Caracalla was the eldest son of the emperor Septimius Severus, and father and son were joint rulers when they came to Britain in AD 211. Their plan was to extend Rome’s control over the northern parts of the island.

But when Septimius Severus died unexpectedly at York in AD 211, Caracalla’s younger brother Geta was promoted to fill his father’s place and the two brothers were proclaimed joint emperors by the Roman army. It was an arrangement that wouldn’t last long. Before the year was out, Caracalla had Geta murdered and took sole control of the empire.

Political Tipp-Ex

As a demonstration of his absolute power, Caracalla decreed that all traces of his younger brother should be erased – a process that we now call a damnatio memoriae. On our altar from South Shields, Geta’s name has been intentionally scratched away. These erasures were carried out all over the empire as gestures of allegiance to Caracalla. A Roman painting from Algeria, now in the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, shows how Geta’s face was even rubbed out of a portrait of the imperial family.

Roman painting from Algeria. Clockwise from top left: Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta (erased). (Paint on wood, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin, inv. 31.329. Diam. 30 cm). Image in Public Domain.

One of the strange things about these official erasures is that they often draw more attention to the alteration than if the stone or painting had been left alone. It’s unlikely that the process was ever intended to completely wipe out all traces of a person, but rather that these sometimes messy erasures were meant to stand out, and remind everyone who the winners and losers were.

Luckily for us, despite the erasure, the all-important letter G for ‘Geta’ has survived, precisely in the place we would expect it.

Dating by disasters

Although the inscription doesn’t have a date in its text, we can work it out from other events. The stone calls both brothers ‘emperor’, so it must have been set up after their accession on 4^th February 211 (a fixed start point for dating we call a terminus post quem). The fact that the altar originally included Geta’s name means that it must have been set up before his death in February 212 (an end-point we call a terminus ante quem). Combining these two historical dates, we can narrow down the altar’s date to the twelve-month period in between.

Up-to-date and out of trouble

The last line of the inscription gives us some idea about why the Lugudunenses (the local community at South Shields) set up the altar. We’re told that they had made a promise to set up an offering to celebrate the sibling emperor’s ‘return’. Very probably this means their safe return to Rome from Britain. The Roman historian Herodian tells us that Caracalla and Geta carried their father’s ashes back to Rome via Gaul. Perhaps South Shields was even the start point of their journey.

Roman Britain is sometimes thought of as a far outpost of the empire. But this altar shows us that the people in South Shields in the third century AD were keeping up-to-date with news from Rome. They had word of the two brothers’ safe return to Rome before setting up their altar, and later they received news of Geta’s damnatio memoriae and acted on it, just as the Roman community in Algeria did. Tyneside was as much a part of the Roman empire as any other, and the people there knew how important it was to stay on the right side of their unpredictable emperor.

AD 211-12 from South Shields. Ashmolean Museum ANChandler.3.3. H. 1.26, W. 0.61, D. 0.37. Currently on display in Arbeia Museum, South Shields, on permanent loan from the Ashmolean.

Further Reading:

Bidwell, P. (2014) ‘The Roman names of the fort at South Shields and an altar to the di conservatores’, in Life in the Limes. Studies of the people and objects of the Roman frontiers presented to Lindsay Allason-Jones on the occasion of her birthday and retirement, eds R. Collins and F. McIntosh (Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow) 49-58

Bruce, J.C. (1875) Lapidarium Septentrionale: or a Description of the Monuments of Roman Rule in the North of England (London)

Chandler, R. (1763) Marmora Oxoniensia (Oxford, Clarendon Press)

Collingwood, R.G. (1923) ‘An altar from South Shields, now at Oxford,’ Archaeologia Aeliana 3^rd series vol. 20, 55-62

A more detailed discussion of the altar, with full bibliographic references, will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online before 2016.

The Rome Gallery, Ashmolean Museum

On a shelf in the Ashmolean’s Rome Gallery, eagle-eyed visitors might spot a tiny bronze plaque, with a rectangular body and triangular handles (a shape called a tabula ansata). At only 5cm tall, a dark greeny-brown and covered with dots, the plaque isn’t much to look at. But on close inspection (squinting helps), these dots form the letters of a Latin inscription. See how many you can make out before scrolling down:

Dot-to-dot decoding

The dots were made by hitting a round-tipped punch with a hammer, and have left the back of the plaque covered in tiny bumps. The punched letters are a bit wonky, don’t quite fit onto the plaque (the middle line spreads out onto the handles), and, worst of all, someone wrote ‘HERCULL’ instead of ‘HERCULI’ (even the Romans made spelling mistakes). But there has also been some care taken to centre the text, to make sure that words are not split up over line-breaks, and even to include little serifs which imitate fancier stone-carved letters. A serif (from the Dutch ‘screef’) is the small mark that can be added to the end of letter-stroke, giving a neat finish to the lines and, on stone, making it easier for the stonemason to compare the height of each letter. On our little tablet, smaller dots have been added, making little stems on the letters to make them look smarter. You can see these very clearly on the first letter of each line.

By Hercules!

As in the majority of Latin inscriptions, some of the words have been abbreviated to save space, effort and material. On our tablet, the abbreviations have saved 11 letters, and lots of punched dots. In full, it says:

Deo / Herculi/ Marus tribunus / legionis XX fecit

‘For the god Hercules, Marus, tribune of the 20th legion, made this.’

It’s a short inscription which tells us that the plaque was nailed up as an offering to Hercules by a Roman army officer stationed in Britain. Offerings like these were a way of asking or thanking the gods for support. It’s no surprise that Hercules, famous for his strength and courage, was the god of choice for Marus, the military man.

Since he tells us that he was a tribune, Marus was probably of equestrian rank, but the relatively modest scale of the bronze plaque suggests that he was one of the mid-ranking officers. Although the 20^th legion spent much of its time stationed at Chester (Roman Deva), in north-west of England, near the border with Wales, the plaque was supposedly discovered on the opposite side of the county, at Benwell, near Newcastle and the Roman fort at Condercum. It’s possible that Marus set up this offering to Hercules while the legion was on active service near Hadrian’s Wall.

XX, VV, ??

In either AD 61 or AD 8, the 20^th legion (or ‘LEG XX’ as Marus puts it) was rewarded for its bravery with the special honorific title Valeria Victrix. To keep things short, the 20^th Legion Valeria Victrix often appeared in inscriptions as ‘LEG XX VV’. This was precisely the abbreviation we found in April 2014 when the AshLI team used special imaging software to read a disappearing inscription on an altar in the Ashmolean’s Ark to Ashmolean Gallery (here).

If Marus didn’t bother to include ‘VV’ on the plaque, it might mean that it was made before the legion was awarded the title, and could give us some clue to its date. But the letters might also just have been left out to save space. After all, Marus didn’t even have enough room to include his full name. The famous clay antefix on display in the British Museum,was made long after the legion got its new name, but still only has the basic ‘LEG XX’. Because our bronze plaque made its way onto the antiquities market without a proper archaeological record of where it was found, we may never really know exactly when it was that a Roman soldier went to Newcastle and punched Hercules…

c. 1^st-2^nd centuries AD (?). Ashmolean Museum AN2001.1. H. 0.49, W. 0.71, D. 0.1. On display in the Rome Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum.

A more detailed discussion of the plaque, with full bibliographic references, will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online before 2016.

Looking Blank

On display in the Ashmolean’s Ark to Ashmolean gallery stands a red sandstone altar. On three of its sides there are relief designs: a six-petalled flower, a jug and a libation-dish, each within a square frame. At first sight, the fourth side appears to be blank.

But closer inspection reveals faint traces of letters. This square frame once held the Latin inscription that gave details of the man who set up the altar, the god he dedicated it to, when and why. Unfortunately, since its discovery in the seventeenth century, the text has become illegible. But with a combination of modern technology and old-fashioned archival research, AshLI have produced a new reading.

Eagle-eyed Antiquarians

The altar was found intact in Foregate Street, Chester in 1653. By chance, the Chief Master of the Chester Free School, John Grenehalgh, happened to witness its discovery. Recognising its Roman origins, he returned the next day to transcribe its text, but was never confident about the accuracy of his transcription. The altar caused something of a sensation in antiquarian circles at the time, and several other transcriptions were made, each slightly different.

The inscription, already in poor condition when it was discovered, became increasingly worn after the altar was set up in a garden in Chester for some years. It was finally given to Oxford University in 1675 by Brasenose alumnus Sir Francis Cholmondeley, who came from a local landowning family from Vale Royal near Chester, and it became part of the Ashmolean collection. When Ernst Hübner examined the stone for CIL in 1873, he remarked ‘Vidi, sed vestigia tantum litterarum perpauca evanida dignoscere potui’ – ‘I have seen it, but I was only able to make out a very few, disappearing traces of the letters.’ He wasn’t able to read the text himself and had to rely on an earlier transcription by Randal Holme from 1688.

New Technology: RTI

Luckily, the AshLI team were able to use technology unavailable to earlier epigraphers. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) uses a combination of photography and multiple light sources to map the surface of even very worn objects, bringing out marks that are invisible to the naked eye. Ben Altshuler from Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents was able to produce new surface images of the stone, which have confirmed the accuracy of much of Grenehagh’s initial report, but which also support a suggestion first made by Wilhelm Kubitschek  in 1889, that the dedicator of the stone may have been a Spaniard from Clunia, a town in Hispania Tarraconensis.

Click to enlarge

New Reading

Unfortunately, even with the help of RTI, some areas of the text are still illegible: the surface of the stone has become too damaged. But by combining the old records, the RTI images, and knowledge of similar formulae, we now think the inscription reads:

 I O M TANARO
T ELUPIUS GALER
PRAESENS CLUNIA
PRI LEG XX VV
COMMODO ET
LATERANO COS
V S L M

I(ovi) ° O(ptimo) M(aximo) Tanaro / T(itus) Elupius Galer(ia tribu) / Praesens [Cl]unia / pri(nceps) ° leg(ionis) ° XX V(aleriae) V(ictricis) /  Commodo et / Laterano co(n)s(ulibus) / v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito)

‘To Jupiter Best and Greatest Tanarus, Titus Elupius Praesens, of the Galerian voting-tribe, from Clunia, princeps of the 20^th Legion Valeria Victrix, in the consulship of Commodus and Lateranus, willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow.’

A Cosmopolitan Cast

So this altar seems to have been dedicated by an officer of Spanish origin, in the Roman legion XX Valeria Victrix which was stationed during the Flavian period at Chester, near the border with Wales in the north-west of England. He was princeps of a legion, the second centurion in seniority, next in command after the primus pilus. The consuls he mentions give us a date of AD 154. The ‘Commodus’ here is Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus, now better known as the emperor Lucius Verus. His name ‘Elupius’ isn’t entirely certain, but now looks the most plausible among the many previous suggestions, which have included  ‘Elypius’, ‘Elufruis’, ‘Flavius’, and even ‘Bruttius’.

But several mysteries remain: Tanarus is a Celtic thunder god, who appears in other inscriptions in the Rhineland and Dalmatia, but is otherwise unknown in Britain. Why are there no other British inscriptions to Tanarus, and why is a Spaniard dedicating an altar to a god more commonly associated with Germania?

A more detailed discussion of the stone, with full bibliographic references, will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online before 2016.

Sources Cited

Holme, R. (1688) The Academy of Armory (Chester)
Hübner, E.W.E. (1873) Inscriptiones Britanniae latinae (Berlin)
Kubitschek, J.W. (1889) Imperium Romanum Tributim Discriptum (Vindobonae)