Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas,

The AshLI Team

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]

A cast of twenty, in full costume, including lictors, musicians, mourners, an Archimimus, a funeral director and members of the Roman household, laid to rest the body of Tiberius Claudius Abascantianus, a Roman commemorated in a fine ash-urn in the Ashmolean’s collection. The event was the result of months of preparation, which included making costumes, building a funerary couch complete with corpse, creating an ash urn (with the help of Amy Chaplin, on work experience with us from Cherwell School), learning to play Roman musical instruments, and casting wax imagines from the team’s own faces.

The funeral was repeated twice during the evening, with each performance including an introduction to the cast, excerpts from the Twelve Tables on Roman funeral practices, a eulogy for the deceased, an off-stage cremation and, finally, the installation of Abascantianus’ remains in the family tomb, all accompanied by the sounds of a cornu, an aulos, and team of enthusiastic professional mourners. The museum, packed with over 4,000 visitors, perfectly evoked the bustle and noise of a Roman funeral, with the procession winding its way through the crowds, and with more following along behind.

The funeral was masterminded by AshLI to celebrate the recent installation of new Roman displays in several galleries, and in particular a hand-painted columbarium in the Reading and Writing Gallery housing the original ash urn of the real Abascantianus. The decoration of the niched tomb, with its display of funerary plaques, inscribed ash chests and pierced libation ‘table’, was inspired by the columbarium at the Villa Doria Pamfilii in Rome, and handpainted by Oxford-based designer Claire Venables. Head of the AshLI project, Prof. Alison Cooley, was on hand with a series of short talks to introduce visitors to the new columbarium display and tell the story of the real Abascantianus who had first inspired the event.

New columbarium (‘dovecote’) tomb in the Ashmolean Museum, installed by AshLI and hand painted by Claire Venables of Giraffe Corner.

Here’s how we got on:

Wall-painting of Flora
from Villa di Arriana at Stabiae, from the first century AD

Last Seen

When Richard Chandler published his famous catalogue of antiquities in Oxford (his Marmora Oxoniensia), he began his description of the Latin inscriptions with an illustration of ten objects. The Flora plaque is shown on the far right, turned at a right-angle to the others. This is the last known record of the plaque in the Ashmolean collection. At some time after Chandler’s sighting in 1763, the little plaque disappeared, and its whereabouts still remain a mystery.

But while we can’t physically inspect the inscription today, we’re fortunate to have several sources that help us fill in the gaps. Not only do they give us important details like its findspot, size and material, but they also tell the extraordinary story of how the plaque came to England before mysteriously vanishing.

Opening plate of Richard Chandler’s Marmora Oxoniensia (1763), Volume 3, the last recorded sighting of the Ashmolean’s Flora plaque; the origin of the plaque – the Latium/Lazio region of Italy

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…

The first, and most obvious, source of information about the plaque is the Latin text inscribed on the front. Thanks to Chandler’s drawing, we know it read:

FLORAE
TI(BERIUS) PLAUTIUS DROSUS
MAG(ISTER) II
V(OTUM) S(OLVIT) L(IBENS) M(ERITO)

‘To Flora.
Tiberius Plautius Drosus,
official for the second time,
fulfilled his vow willingly and deservedly.’

It tells us that the plaque was set up by a man named Drosus, a member of the senatorial Plautii family who came from Latium in Italy. From what we know about this family’s activities, and when they were politically active, we can tell that the plaque was originally set up in the first century AD.

This kind of dedication was a familiar part of Roman religion – gods and mortals kept in each other’s good books by exchanging favours for offerings (see our blog about a plaque to Hercules). Drosus proudly advertised that he had held a public office twice, probably as part of the district administration, or perhaps even a religious association, and it seems likely that this offering to Flora was to thank her for her part in his success.

A Collection of Collectors

Then the trail goes cold, and we have to travel forward 1600 years, to the writings of eighteenth-century historians to trace what happened next. In 1702, Raffaele Fabretti, recorded that the plaque had been discovered in a villa in Latium, and that it had been found ‘recently’. Although we’ve no way of testing whether these details are true, the Latium suggestion looks very credible: it was where Drosus and the Plautii family came from. But what does ‘recently’ mean?

It turns out that ‘recently’ probably meant ‘within the last fifty years or so’ (which doesn’t sound very recent, but is, admittedly, more recent than the first century AD). We know this because another eighteenth-century historian, John Ward, tells us that one of first owners of our Flora plaque was the extraordinary Queen Christina of Sweden. Famous at the time for what were considered ‘masculine’ traits, she was highly educated, read both Latin and Greek, and was a patron of the arts and sciences. Since Queen Christina died in 1689, the Flora plaque must have been discovered before then. We might even push the date of discovery back a little more: in 1654, Queen Christina abdicated her throne and moved from Sweden to Rome. It’s possible that this Flora plaque from Latium came to the Queen’s notice after she had moved to the region.

Three owners of the Flora plaque: Queen Christina of Sweden (1626 –1689); Decio Azzolini (1623 –1689); and Livio Odescalchi (1652 – 1713)

On her death, Queen Christina bequeathed part of her art and antiquities collection (including the Flora plaque) to her intimate friend, Cardinal Decio Azzolino. But he died only a few weeks after her, and his possessions passed to his nephew, Pompeo Azzolino. Uninterested in the collection and uncomfortable with speculation about the relationship between the Queen and his uncle, Pompeo sold most of it off. And so in 1692, the Flora plaque passed onto its fifth known owner, the Italian nobleman and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Livio Odescalchi. He was so proud to own an object once owned by Queen Christina, that he attached a small bronze label to the plaque which read EX REGIIS CHRISTINAE THESAVRIS – ‘From the Royal Treasury of Christina’.

Museum Hopping

But the Flora plaque didn’t stay still for long. By 1709, it was no longer in Odescalchi’s private collection, and the Jesuit scholar Filippo Bonanni saw it on display in the Kircher Museum in Rome. Only a few years later, in 1720, the Flora plaque was put up for sale in Rome, and bought by the English antiquarian, Richard Rawlinson, who brought it to England. One eighteenth-century source tells us that Rawlinson, like Livio Odescalchi, was particularly proud of the plaque precisely because of the little label that showed it once belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1753, Rawlinson gave his collection of inscriptions to the University of Oxford, where it eventually became part of the Ashmolean Museum. Here the story comes full circle, to Richard Chandler’s last definite sighting in 1763.

The Kircher Museum in Rome, established in 1651; English antiquarian, Richard Rawlinson

A Floridbunda of Floras: Friend or Faux?

The eighteenth-century accounts helpfully tell us what was written on the plaque, where it was found and that it was made of bronze. But if we want to see what the missing plaque looked like, all is not lost because we know there are several other, identical versions in existence. In fact, there may be as many as six of them.

Three of the six are currently thought to be genuine: our missing, Ashmolean version; a version in the Naples Museum and a version in the Terme Museum in Rome. By comparing them, we can get an idea of the size of the plaque, which we can’t from Chandler’s drawing. From the Terme version, we know it was 6.6cm high, 19.5cm long, and 0.5cm thick.

The Terme version of the Flora plaque (inv. 65029), and a ‘squeeze’ (paper impression) of the Naples version (inv. 2570)

If these three identical plaques are genuine, we should imagine Drosus offering his thanks to Flora by setting up a series of plaques, perhaps in different Italian sanctuaries.

But we also know about three more versions of the plaque, and these are thought to be forgeries: in 1795, an Italian inscriptions specialist named Luigi Gaetano Marini recorded that he had seen a version of the Flora plaque being offered for sale by an antiques dealer, and condemned it as a modern forgery. Despite his identification, he was disappointed when the plaque still ended up in the Vatican Museum. We also know of another copy which was more honestly displayed by Scipione Maffei (1675-1755) in his museum in Verona, in a display dedicated to modern forgeries of ancient works. In a familiar turn of events, this fake version of the Flora plaque was found to be missing in 1872, and its current location if unknown. A third imitation of the plaque was spotted in the catalogue of the personal collection of Professor de Berger at Wittenberg University in Germany, which was published in 1754. Collecting antiquities, and even good replicas, was a popular hobby for educated gentlemen of the time, and the small, portable plaque to Flora, with its short text would have made it an ideal candidate for copying – whether the buyers knew what they were getting or not.

Finding Flora

All these different versions, and Flora’s habit of disappearing, have left AshLI with lots of difficult questions: Where is the Ashmolean’s copy of the plaque? Can we be sure it was genuine? Were the three versions identified as fakes, really fakes? Might some of the eighteenth-century accounts, which seem to be describing different plaques, actually be about the same plaque in different hands? And are there any more Flora plaques out there?

At the moment, we can’t answer these questions. As more museums and private collections create searchable catalogues and are more open about what they have, it becomes gradually easier to do this detective work, so perhaps, one day, the mystery will be solved. For the moment, we’re doing our bit with a new database of all 400 Latin inscriptions in the Ashmolean Museum collection, which will go live in 2016. But in the meantime, if you see Flora, will you drop us a line? And don’t let her out of your sight…

The bibliography behind our search will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online in 2016.

Image Sources:

• Wall-painting of Flora from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Flora_or_Spring_fresco_%28from_Stabiae%29#/media/File:Flora_mit_dem_F%C3%BCllhorn.jpeg
• Plate of Richard Chandler’s Marmora Oxonienia (1763), Volume 3: http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/arachne/index.php?view[layout]=buch_item&search[constraints][buch][alias]=Chandler1763&search[match]=exact
• Map of Latium/Lazio: « Lazio in Italy » by TUBS. Under licence CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lazio_in_Italy.svg#/media/File:Lazio_in_Italy.svg
• Portrait Queen Christina of Sweden, by David Beck: PD-KONST. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden#/media/File:Drottning_Kristina_av_Sverige.jpg
• Portrait of Cardinal Decio Azzolini, by Jacob-Ferdinand Voet: https://www.lempertz.com/en/catalogues/lot/1027-1/52-jacob-ferdinand-voet-copy-after.html
• Portrait of Livio Odescalchi, by Jakob-Ferdinand Voet: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Livio_Odescalchi_%281655-1713%29,_by_Jakob-Ferdinand_Voet.jpg
• Engraving of the Kircher Museum: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kircher-Museum_im_Collegium_Romanum.jpg
• Portrait of Richard Rawlinson, by William Smith, after George Vertue: National Portrait Gallery, NPG D3996: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw38255/Richard-Rawlinson
• Flora plaque in the Terme 65029: http://www.fotosar.it/index.php?it/57/catalogo/visualizza/1145
• Squeeze of Naples 2570: http://cil.bbaw.de/dateien/db.php?nummer=XIV+3486&andor=AND&nummer2=&fundort_antik=&fundort_modern=&provinz=#

After some clever sleuthing from classics-lovers and amateur epigraphers, we published the solution and the story behind the plaque on our blog.

Now you can listen to members of the AshLI team talk about this little inscription, from inside the Ashmolean’s Rome Gallery, in the second podcast in the project’s new series.

Click here to launch the podcast in a new window.

(c) Ashmolean Museum

Bronze votive plaque from1^st-2^nd centuries AD. H. 4.9cm, W. 7.1cm, D. 1cm. Ashmolean Museum AN2001.1, on display in the Rome Gallery.

Latin:

Deo / Herculi/ Marus tribunus / legionis XX fecit

 English translation:

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

Click here to launch the podcast.

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.

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.

It was a sprawling town house that anyone would have been proud to own. But every night, the sound of clanking chains and a terrifying vision of an old man, his shaggy hair crusted with filth, woke the inhabitants. With each visitation, their terror grew until, sick with sleeplessness, they abandoned the house. It was put up for sale, but no-one would go near it. Then, one day, a man arrived in town, a man famous for his rational mind. A man who didn’t believe in ghosts. Dr Llewelyn Morgan picks up the story with a recording he made especially for AshLI:

The story of Athenodoros and the haunted house comes from the turn of the second century AD, in a letter from Pliny the Younger to his friend Sura (Pliny, Letters VII.27).

Spookily familiar

The basic story – a place is haunted by a ghost who can find no peace until its bones are found and laid to rest – is a very familiar one (The Woman in Black, Coraline, and Sleepy Hollow all rely on it). It’s also very ancient. In Homer’s Odyssey XI, Odysseus meets the ghost of his comrade Elpenor in Hades, and discovers that he’s been left behind on Circe’s island. Elpenor had rolled off the roof where he was sleeping and broken his neck, and needs a proper burial.

The many faces of the Roman ghost

In modern, Western culture, ghosts are often associated with this kind of unfinished business. Set against the Christian tradition of heaven and an appealing afterlife, ghosts often need to have a good reason to be hanging around on earth when they could be somewhere better. But the Romans didn’t have just one idea about ghosts. Some, like the old man in Pliny’s story, were lemures, angry or overlooked spirits, who could cause trouble for the living. They were honoured annually with a series of feast days in May. Not surprisingly, lemures mostly appear in Latin literature (e.g. Ovid’s Fasti 5), since they tend to make good stories. Others ghosts were members of the natural, and ever-increasing band of dead ancestors and close relatives, who functioned as guiding and protective forces in Roman daily life. These spirits, the manes, were imagined as being in or under the earth, and were celebrated with a nine-day festival, the Parentalia, in February, and were often described as gods (di). The distinction between gods and protective spirits wasn’t one which the Romans would have worried too much about.

‘Dis Manibus’

It’s the assembled ranks of this second type of ghost, the ancestor-spirit, which are extremely common in Latin inscriptions. Roman tombstones often open with two letters: DM, short for dis manibus – ‘To the spirits of the departed’. It’s an address to those who have gone before which alerts them that another spirit is on its way, and is commended to their care. Even if the rest of the inscription is broken off, worn away, or downright horrible, the opening letters DM mean that we can be sure we’re dealing with a tombstone, and not some other type of inscription.

Tombstone of Restitutus, 2nd-3rd century AD, Ashmolean Museum ANChandler.3.79

If we’re really lucky, the stonecutter might have included a slightly longer abbreviation, like the DIIS (this time with double ‘i’) MANIB we see on this ash-urn currently on display in the Ashmolean’s Rome gallery:

Ash-urn of Cornelia Thalia, c. AD 50-100, Ashmolean Museum AN2007.63, Rome Gallery

A toast for a ghost

One of the ways that the Romans kept the di manes happy was by making offerings. A recently deceased relative and the rest of the di manes could be honoured by pouring libations or leaving food on or near the grave. One of the pieces that the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project hopes to put on display in 2015 is a remarkable tombstone for a woman named Livia Casta. In the middle of the stone is a relief carving of a Roman cup, pierced with four holes. The stone was originally set horizontally so that Livia Casta’s relatives could pour wine, honey and water offerings into the cup, which would drain through onto her ashes where she could enjoy it. Honouring the ghosts of dead relatives and the wider band of di manes was really a question of keeping them involved, and making sure they had their share of pleasures like food and drink.

Mensa sepulchralis of Livia Casta, AD 50-100, Ashmolean Museum ANChandler3.45

Did the Romans believe in ghosts?

It’s always dangerous to make generalisations about what an entire culture believed. It’s tempting to use the evidence in literature and inscriptions to draw conclusions about what the Romans thought, but plenty of people read (and write) ghost stories without necessarily being convinced about the existence of ghosts, and plenty of people ask for things to be caved on tombstones because they’re traditional. Some Romans probably believed in ghosts, and some probably didn’t. But what’s very clear is that the Romans liked the idea of ghosts, and used them in various different ways: for managing luck, for keeping family memories alive and even, just like us, for telling scary stories.

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

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.