The Cult of Sulis-Minerva at Bath: the Religious Ritual of the Patron Goddess at Bath
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The Cult of Sulis-Minerva at Bath: The Religious Ritual of the Patron Goddess at Bath. By James McBurney A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Classical Studies 2016 1 Table of contents: Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………..2 Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………3 Intoduction…………………………………………………………………………………...5 1.Bath and Sulis’ temple complex………………………………………….........................11 The history of Aquae Sulis…………………………………………………......................12 Dating Bath’s defixiones………………………………………………………………….21 The use of metal at Bath………………………………………………………………….28 When Roman Bath ended………………………………………………………………...33 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..44 2.Prayers or Curses? A Study of Bath’s Defixiones………………………………………45 Vulgar Latin on Bath’s defixiones………………………………………........................47 Defixiones from around the Ancient World……………………………........................52 The power of prayer in the Roman World……………………………………………..56 The formulae and subject of defixiones…………………………………………………61 Differences between Bath’s defixiones and examples from the Mediterranean………………………………………………………………………64 The relationship between defigentes and deities on curse tablets………...............................................................................................................75 The defigentes of Bath……………………………………………………........................83 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...85 3. The Cult of Sulis-Minerva and the goddess’ divine attributes………………………...87 The lack of evidence regarding cult activity at Bath…………………………………...87 The Romanization of ancient British religion…………………………………………..91 The structure and layout of Bath’s Romano-Celtic temple complex…........................95 Bath’s Gorgon pediment: A hybridization of Roman and Celtic religion……………………………………………………………………………….99 Sulis’ Minervan attributes: The conflation of two goddesses…………........................103 A possible connection to the sun: Sulis’ solar attributes……………………………....108 Sulis as a judicial deity…………………………………………………………………...111 Religious evidence from Bath’s sacred spring………………………….........................113 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...119 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….........................121 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….126 Figure List………………………………………………………………………………….137 2 Acknowledgements. To my supervisor Judy Deuling, who met with me on a weekly basis and constantly kept me on my feet. Thank you for helping me to develop my thesis over the past two and a half years as well as providing enthusiastic advice. I’m going to miss meeting with you at 8:30 am Friday mornings. I appreciate everything you have done for me. To my other supervison Diana Burton who has provided invaluable direction and advice. Your ideas helped keep my thesis on track and stopped me from wondering off course. Your insight has helped me to develop my ideas and get them down on paper. Thank you for working with over the past two years. I would like to thank my family: Dad, Jess and Max for feeding me and making sure that I’m alive. I would also like to thank my cat Iggy for being a living stress ball. I would also like to thank the OK518 team: Nikki Carter, Julia Simons, Richard Buckley- Gorman, Laura Corn, Tim Smith and Cameron Stanton. Thank you for supporting me and giving me advice when times were at their hardest. Praise Solon! Lastly I would like to thank The Lads: Luke van den Hoven, Sylvan Haeusler and Tobin Haeusler. You have been there from the beginning and provided laughs and pints when I needed them the most. 3 Abstract. The Roman City of Bath, also known as Aqua Sulis, lies in the modern British county of Somerset in the south-east of England. During the Roman occupation of ancient Britain, Bath became a significant Roman town centred on a large religious complex. As the Roman city lies underneath the modern city Bath, excavation of both the temple complex has been difficult. To add further problems, Bath was only mentioned in one ancient source, Solinus. Consequently, there is a large gap in the knowledge we have about Roman Bath and its patron goddess. As such a large Romano-Celtic temple complex, Sulis’ cult has important contributions to religion in Roman Britain. Subsequently, studying and understanding Sulis’ cult is important to the study of Roman Britain. This thesis discusses features of Sulis’ cult and what this may tell us about the goddess’s attributes as well as how her cult functioned. The large Romano-Celtic temple was functional from c.65 to c.400 CE. However, there is evidence which would suggest that Sulis was worshipped by the ancient Britons before the Romans had a permanent presence in Britain. This thesis will place Roman Bath within the wider context of Romano-British history, outlining how it functioned through architecture and evidence for the temple’s gradual decline. Scholarship has agreed that Sulis is a Celtic deity who was worshipped by the Celts before the Roman arrived in Britain. Through Roman religious sensibilities, Sulis was conflated with the Roman goddess Minerva. Most of the physical remains at Bath are architectural features, votive offerings and altars. Many links have been drawn between Sulis and her thermal spring. For example, Sulis-Minerva has been regarded as an important healing divinity and her temple complex a place people can go for healing. This thesis will discuss Sulis and her connection to the goddess Minerva as well as what the goddess’s relationship was to the Romans and Britons. Attention has been drawn to a large cache of 130 Latin defixiones, or curse tablets, discovered in Sulis spring. The curses most commonly beseech Sulis to hunt down a culprit and punish them. The defixiones constitute an important source of evidence regarding Sulis’ attributes. There has been some debate as to the nature of these curse tablets as there have been suggestions that they read more as ‘prayers for justice’. This thesis will explore the idea that the tablets acted as a medium for a devotee to ask the goddess for retribution against a perceived wrong. A comparison will be drawn between Bath’s curse tablets and other forms of Roman prayers comparing the two. As of now, the defixiones contribute a large portion of evidence towards religious life at Bath. Sulis represents hybridization between two ancient civilizations. On the one hand, Sulis had strong roots to ancient British religion but after Roman occupation her cult became predominantly Roman in form. I will discuss the remaining aspects of Celtic religion at Bath, such as in the Gorgon pediment, and how this was changed under Roman rule. 4 5 Introduction The city of Bath, or Aquae Sulis in Latin, is one that has been occupied constantly throughout its existence. During the Roman occupation of ancient Britain, Bath became an important Roman town centred on a large religious complex. Modern Bath lies in the southwest of Britain in the county of Somerset. Today, a large modern town is built where the ancient city once sat. As one of Britain’s only thermal hotspots, Bath has continued to draw people to its modern spa complex and still continues to be used today. At the heart of Bath was the temple of the goddess Sulis Minerva. As a goddess, Sulis is mysterious. Bath and its patron goddess do not appear in ancient literature, making the study of the goddess and her temple complex difficult. The only evidence available to scholars has been the physical evidence left behind at the Roman temple. However, the presence of the modern city of Bath has made excavation of the ancient city problematic. Even so, the size of Bath and the intricacy of Sulis’ large temple complex highlights a place that was very important to the Britons and the Romans living in Bath. The large Romano-Celtic temple of Sulis Minerva was elaborately decorated and functioned from c.65 CE- c.400 CE. The temple’s aggrandizement points to a religious complex that was popular as well as wealthy. Consequently, it is peculiar that we know so little about Bath and the goddess that resided there. As such a prominent Romano-British city, Bath is important in the study of Roman Britain. Most physical remains at Bath are architectural features, votive offerings and altars. Many links have been drawn between Sulis and her hot spring. As hot springs were important places of healing in the ancient world, it 1 has been suggested that Sulis acted as a healer through the properties of her spring. 1 Green (1995) 93. 6 Bath and Sulis’ cult has been the focus of large amounts of scholarship. However, conclusions have been limited by a lack of definitive evidence. There are still many gaps in scholarship about the goddess Sulis Minerva. A lack of evidence has led to speculation about the goddess Sulis and her cult. Although Barry Cunliffe has compiled a comprehensive archaeological report on Bath in his two volumes of The Temple of Minerva Sulis at Bath,2 most scholarship such as Miranda Green has tended to focus on only a few aspects of Sulis’ cult such as the Gorgon pediment or Bath’s hot springs. Most scholarship has agreed that Sulis is a prominently Celtic deity who was worshipped by the Celts before the Romans occupied Britain.3 Through her connection to the thermal hot springs, scholars such as Miranda Green have emphasized an important healing aspect of Sulis’ cult at Bath.4 Furthermore, Cunliffe has the most detailed discussion of Bath’s defixiones in his publication on the region’s