384. The Roman Invasion: Gods on Hadrian’s Wall (Ep 2)

20:49Anita Anand:Back at the wall again. Now, we've moved from Bath up to Northumberland. We're on the edge of Caledonia with the kind of picks making dirty faces and throwing insults over the Moorland. What are the Celtic gods that the people there are absorbing into their pamphlet? Yes. So we've got all sorts. In some ways, you might think of it as a microcosm of the whole religious Roman world, sort of broadly beyond Britain as well, because you've got the Roman state cult, you've got the worship of the emperors, for example, but you've also got mystery religions incorporated from the East, you've got local deities.

21:30So it's just this bubbling, boiling, melting pot of all these different religious ideas coming together. We've got some really wonderful ones. I was up there looking. It was basically in one field. You find this wonderful goddess, Coventina, and she is or seems to be an incredible native goddess from Roman Britain. But she's particularly associated with a sacred spring at Corabra Fort, which the Romans would have called Broccolitia. And I cannot say that without saying broccoli. So I'm very proud of myself right now. I forgot that. But she's very local. She's not even local to the wall. She seems to be local to one part of the wall, but she's very popular there.

22:12Anita Anand:There's a very good little museum there, isn't there, we went to last year. Yeah, it's full of her stuff. I love that. I love, because I always feel a bit sad when you see, and I understand why it happens, but religious sort of artefacts that have been placed somewhere so carefully that have been removed in the modern day from where they were. because for me that feels like they've been removed from their whole context. The reason they were there, I always imagine the local gods just sitting there going, oh, they're taking my coins away. Oh, okay, never mind. But this one is quite nice because at least they all left it together.

22:47Thousands of coins she's got and altars dedicated to her by Roman soldiers. And there's one very famous one, this extraordinary relief, and it's three women and they're sort of separated but they're together and they're pouring out from these vessels the waters of what seem to be her sacred springs it looks like she's the one in the middle because she's dressed differently she's almost got it almost looks like armor but i'm not saying it is armor but she's she's dressed differently possibly the two on either side of her her attendants maybe they're nymphs of some sort

23:20Anita Anand:they like to do three of anything don't they the cults there's lots of three goddesses yes this

23:26William Dalrymple:sort of triple aspect idea and we've got other examples of that i was going to ask you about another local deity i hope i say right antinocyticus did i ran at it so glad you said that not me the trick is eleanor you run at great speed and hope not to get concussed so let's talk about antinocyticus which i've now nailed i mean he sort of reminds me a little bit and this is what i also find interesting of a mr tumulus type of creature you know that curly hair two little horns you know it just shows that we have a collective memory that gets passed on one way or the other tell us about Antonisiticus what is he for and who is he local to right so yeah exactly as you say imagine a little cute Mr Tumnus type figure possibly he's from well it looks like slightly further east along the wall so he's known from the fort at Benwell he seems to be a very local deity because there's this one temple at Benwell or Kondakarim as the as the look at me running up to the name.

24:26William Dalrymple:Fast and hard. That's what you need to do. So we can locate him somewhere near Newcastle. He's basically one of the Geordie gods he's been described as, which I love. He's got a flat cap. Yeah, he's great. He's such a... So he's associated with one temple and I think it's like three altars and a sculpture of him exactly as you say, Anita. He's got this beautiful, these locks of hair and then these two locks that just come round and it's like horns, not horns, but they do look quite horn-like, exactly as you say. There is another one. If you see again the sculpture of him, he absolutely looks similar.

25:03From a little further away, the fort at Binchester, he was found in this ancient rubbish dump in this midden. Someone put him there. Here, again, he's got these two little pokey horn hair bits and he's also got this torque around his neck. We might remember the most famous talk wearer, Boudicca, you know, it's Cassius Dio quite a lot later who says that she wears this torque. But we know from other sort of Britonic hordes, for example, we've got this kind of torque, this kind of golden, often big, thick, heavy necklace going around. And he seems to have one of these. So he's already sort of signalling Britonic, local, indigenous through this Celtic, we might say.

25:42So it's this idea here that he's a local god, he's worshipped locally, he's absorbed into this Roman British framework romano british framework because he's there being worshipped as the fort at the fort

25:55Anita Anand:by the soldiers so in india you have in a sense two tiers of gods to this day you have the big universal gods like lord shiva and lord vishnu and madurga who are all over the place but you also get the little gods who have their particular hillock or their tree clump or their ferric quarters bubbling up red or something is the same thing happening in in newcastle and or what would have been the the site of newcastle centuries later yeah i think i think potentially so just given that there are local ones and they are definitely there um but but then we also have ones that we might recognize their names of because they're not local in that way and there's If we sort of come off the wall for a bit, if we go south, we've got a really good example of this.

26:46Mars Nodans. And obviously everyone knows Mars as a god. So this is someone where we've got potentially the local pairing with the not local.

26:55William Dalrymple:So, you know, you have that pairing in Lydney in Gloucestershire, which I know very, very well, actually. It's a beautiful place. Yeah.

27:03Anita Anand:You and your fancy Cotswold holidays.

27:05William Dalrymple:I have a very fancy friend in Lidney, who's got a very lovely place there. So tell us about that pairing. Who's Nodans? Because there is a very exciting link to Tolkien with Nodans, which I want you to tell me about. We've got C.S.

27:21Anita Anand:Lewis and Tolkien in this episode already.

27:23William Dalrymple:Well, I was going to say, I should really explain. I said Mr. Tuminous as if everybody knows The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mr. Tuminous as if he's our accountant, the podcast accountant. he's a fawn character in a book you may not have read called the lion the witch and the war droid but tell us about mars nodens he would by the way totally have been an accountant

27:41Anita Anand:i would have nailed it yeah so mars nodens is wonderful exactly as you say so he's linked to litany in blostershire and we've got to think a little bit about the context in which his temple there or a temple complex this is there's big stuff going on here it's basically like a a spa health resort, something like that. It looks like... In the Cotswolds. It's perfect. It's the Chipping Norton set from the first century. And this promontory that it's up on, oh, it's a lovely view. It's overlooking the Severn Estuary. And we've got to think as well, you know, the Severn Estuary has that incredible tidal bore wave event that happens.

28:17So it's already this place that, again, we think of, you know, Sulis Minerva, same sort of thing here. It's associated with a place where we've got unusual landscape features, the power of the natural world that you can actually see there. So Nodens is very much a British deity. He seems to have been associated with maybe hunting and healing and water and also, interestingly, dogs. There's lots of little dog statuettes that are found there. It's been suggested this is because dogs are associated with healing in the classical world because they can lick wounds. So there's this kind of curative aspect to their presence there.

28:54The idea is that this Lindley Sanctuary, this Cotswold Spa lovely place, is a place of healing. People come to sleep, to maybe receive visions. It's not all physical healing, but very much it's this sense that they can heal their bodies and their minds in the context of this religious deity. The temple has this long hall. It's designed for maybe a guest house. It's got bugs. It's even got a little amphitheatre. And so we've got this sense of Nodens as a healer, as a visionary, paired with Mars, because in the Roman world, he has his own healing aspects. And so it's this coherent theological matching, we might say there.

29:43And as you say, Tolkien wrote a paper on him. Tolkien loved him. He was really young. This is way pre-Lord of the rings 1932 1932 exactly so i think sometimes we forget that tolkien was a serious scholar he's professor of old english at um oxford and within this context of him being you know this very serious scholarly don he writes a philological appendix which i don't think is quite as exciting as as what he writes later on but sort of you know let's let's go with it well look we've talked

30:16William Dalrymple:about the pairing we've talked about absorption um but what happens to you know the celtic religions fully formed religions we'll find out after the break

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31:12Anita Anand:The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. No. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other.

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31:36William Dalrymple:Welcome back. So, Eleanor, you know, the Celtic religions, the Celtic tradition, poetry, art, it stands proudly different and in of itself. You know, when you're looking at a Celtic cross or a Celtic, you know, sort of a piece of ephemera, is that also the same with religion, that it is distinct, stubbornly so, and no Romano-British nonsense is going to get in the way. I think this is a story very much of adaptation and where the resistance, that stubbornness happens, that's where we get the friction. But where we see, I think the Celtic art is a really interesting one because what we think of when we say Celtic art is it's sort of La Taine style.

32:21Anita Anand:We should explain that term because it's an important one. La Taine is a place in Switzerland, which is not somewhere we normally associate with Celts if we're thinking of sort of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But this art style begins in Central Europe. Exactly. And that reminds us that when we're talking about these sort of Celtic speaking cultures, they are very much connected. We're here sort of in Britain and Ireland. We're out on the fringe of that. But that's part of the reason that it survived so long. And when we think of Celtic art, specifically maybe the Latin style, it's flowing patterns.

32:52Dr. Peter Robinson We see that often in, say, Iron Age deposit cultures, ritual cultures, if we're thinking about really - Dr. Peter Robinson

33:01Anita Anand:Battersea Shield. Dr. Peter Robinson Battersea Shield, exactly. Thrown into the Thames, Llin-Kerig-Bach over on Anglesey, all these places where we see this distinctive style. Exactly. What's really interesting is that we know the Roman style is different. It's essentially naturalistic. It's more about the accurate representation of bodies and things. But what we see in Britain is this co-mingling of these two styles in all sorts of extraordinary ways. And I was up on Hadrian's Wall. You mentioned Vindolanda. And I was making a programme up there about Celtic influences there. I mean, it is an incredible place.

33:41There's nothing quite like it.

33:42Anita Anand:One of my favourite places is everything you want from Northumberland in one sort of concentrated burst. That's it. That's exactly. And an excellent cafe as well, I have to say. A very good cafe with excellent coffee.

33:53William Dalrymple:Yeah. So what makes this place so special? Why do you love it so much? Oh, so many other than the cafe. Well, these brooches. So these brooches were found within the context of the Roman fort, the garrison, you know, the whole sort of military establishment there. But there's one, for example, it was this dragon-esque brooch. It was inlaid with coloured enamel, very gaudy. And I remember Andrew describing it as a fusion fashion item, which is, I think, an excellent phrase, because it very much is based on the indigenous art forms. There was another one. It was a little silver one. It had open lattice work.

34:33Anita Anand:We should say that there's often more in common than we imagine. But you mentioned knotwork, Anita, but those Roman pavements have exactly the same knots that you later see on Celtic crosses. This is it and I think that's it. There is often a lot more that is recognisable as we move between cultures because we don't have those hard lines between them. A really good example of that actually because one has just been discovered a couple of months ago they announced it. There are these incredible vessels that we find dotted around. There's some in Britain, I think there's a couple in France, a couple in Spain, and the Spanish ones just been found.

35:10And they're basically, they look like they might be retirement gifts. They're souvenirs that come from Hadrian's Wall, but you see on them again, this fusion of styles. So you often have the little turrets, the square lines of Hadrian's Wall with the stones, but then you have this amazing swirling massive sort of latent style artwork on there too and i think that's conscious it's saying look i was here at this lovely exotic place and look at this lovely artifact i got when i retired i mean

35:39William Dalrymple:it's completely appropriate that a knot should you know tie together two different cultures i think that's wonderful but i mean i just i'm interested to know how the roman religions influence back you know so how much do we find you know zeus and mars and minerva in scotland or wales or ireland Do we have that sort of bounce back as well? Yeah, that's a really interesting one. I think it's hard to tell. Part of the reason is because when we move outside the Roman centres, we don't know how much they are really being influenced by Rome that's come in and sort of imposed its socio-political sort of programme on it.

36:16So basically, if you are, everyday stuff like, you know, coming in from the hinterland and selling goods, you are going to have that. But if we're getting out from there, it's hard to tell. In the case of Wales, for example, Wales is very much part of that Roman province for the most part. Lydney is very close to the Welsh border, for example. So, yeah, it looks like there is that movement between. So, about 100 miles north of Hadrian's Wall, we have the short-lived Antonine Wall, which is sort of the Firth to the Clyde line.

36:46Anita Anand:Rough Castle. Yeah, exactly. And Baresden, where they, oh, we won't get into that because I was reading recently this amazing study of the poo that was found in the latrines from Baresden. Well, actually, it is relevant. It was showing you what the Roman soldiers were eating and how much of it was imported versus local. And so in this poo, you have a microcosm, I think, of the religious situation up there as well, this movement between cultures. The altars there are very mixed, religiously speaking, but beyond the Antonine Wall, where you don't have that same sense of settlement. You have incursions, you have invasions, but you don't have - You have massacres on a big scale.

37:27You've got massacres. Yeah, exactly. And very famously, Calgigas' speech saying, you know, you make a desert and you call it civilisation, you call it an empire. But here, there's the possibility that they are taking Roman artefacts, things like coins, and using them as votive deposits. For example, when they're building new buildings, they're putting brooches and bronzes in these ritual contexts as deposits. But it's harder to tell beyond that. Obviously, they don't conquer Ireland in the same way, But Roman material certainly does appear in Irish contexts, religious contexts specifically.

38:06William Dalrymple:Can we talk about a thing I know that William's obsessed with? And that is Mithras and the presence of Mithras, who is a Persian far eastern deity. But you do find him in this sort of porridge of belief that you're describing.

38:22Anita Anand:And quite prominent. A Mithraeum on Hadrian's Wall and another one in Inveresk near the Antonine Wall. Yes. So these are really important. And I should just say Porridge of Belief has to be the title for this series. That is excellent. I am totally with you. Mithras is just fascinating. So we have to remember how sort of cosmopolitan the legionaries stationed on the wall really were. So, you know, we've got North Africans, we've got Syrians, we've got Gauls, Spaniards, all sorts. Dacians. Yeah, this is it. And so they are bringing all these incredible gods with them. It's the things that travel with them in their minds.

39:02And writing home for woolly underpants.

39:05Anita Anand:Exactly. So, Mithraism is one of the great enigmas of religious history. And I think those who worshipped Mithras would have been extremely pleased about that because that was the whole idea. It's a mystery religion. The central teachings were revealed only to initiates. They weren't written down for outsiders. And so, we don't really know very much. What we know, as far as we can tell, is that Mithras is this divinity. He is possibly born in a cosmic egg? I think there's one at the Great North Museum where he's died. There is. He pops out of an egg like a little David Attenborough starling or something.

39:43No, he kills a sacred bull in a cave and then possibly from the bull's blood, the life of the world springs forth. So it's very much this rooted deep time cosmology. Now, in terms of those who worshipped Mithras, there's seven grades, which I think are linked to the seven planetary spheres and they move through these seven grades and it's very hierarchical. You know, there's feasting and there's ordeal. It's almost Mason-like. I think that's probably the nearest thing. And the Mithraia, these temples to Mithras are underground or they resemble caves and it's where mostly, or I think exclusively really, men get together.

40:28It's particularly particularly popular with soldiers and merchants.

40:32William Dalrymple:Is it because it's very, I was going to say testicular, but sort of kind of manly and men associated with men? I mean, is that why the soldiers love it as much as they do? Could be the hierarchy. They're like, yeah, I know what this is. I know what a regiment is. I know how that works. I recognise that. Exactly. And certainly, again, I'm not saying they're like masons, but there's something in that sort of sense of, okay, so we know who to look to. We know who we have to keep on side. You know, there's that sense of wheels within wheels, which works very well. So, I mean, look, into this porridge, we should sprinkle some raisins of Christianity now, shouldn't we?

41:08William Dalrymple:Because, you know, it is the newest religion on the block. How does that get sucked in and where do we start seeing it? So, Christianity, the raisins of Christianity arrive, probably sort of we can see them start to arrive in the second century. And it's the same channels that bring Mithraism and other Eastern religions there. So it's soldiers and merchants. It's the ordinary movement of people across the empire. And that's what we have to remember. This is a really fluid place. By the late second, early third century, there are hints of Christian communities in Britain. But it's really important to remember we have very little evidence for this.

41:48We do have St. Albans, what was Verilamium, one of the places that Boudicca attacks back in 60-61 CE. We see there some of the earliest evidence for organised Christian communities because Alban himself is martyred there. The problem is we've got a whole range of dates to play with. This can be anything from 209 possibly up to 304. So the dates are disputed but the point is the tradition is old and it reflects some sort of real event.

42:19Anita Anand:And you begin to get those lovely villas in East Anglia with Cairo and the Beardless Christ, the stuff of the British Museum. Exactly. And that Cairo is very important because we've got the Emperor Constantine associated with that. He's a critical figure, but he's also a very British emperor because he's proclaimed emperor at York in 306. So the legionaries have just watched his father die and they proclaim him emperor. and then there's all this fighting and then this culminates with his victory at the milvian bridge in 312 and this is where he's said to have seen this chiro figure in the sky and like words saying you know by this sign i will conquer exactly by this sign i will conquer and what follows is christianity up to this point has been a persecuted religion a legal religion subversive in quite a similar way to when we were talking about the druids that same sorts of political subversion that the Romans really don't like.

43:17But suddenly we've got the Edict of Milan in 313, which legalises Christianity. We've got the Council of Nicaea in 325. Story goes there that St. Nicholas, who's basically Father Christmas, punches a heretic. We've got a lovely mug that says, St. Nicholas, punching heretics since 325.

43:36William Dalrymple:But the point is that Christianity is becoming sort of very linked to the imperial machine. So, you know, and eventually it becomes the state religion. Well, what is interesting to me is that even though you have it as a state religion, we saw an echo of this when we did our Egypt series, where you suddenly had, you know, someone deciding that we're not going to worship the gods anymore. We're just going to do the art in the sun disc. And everyone goes, yeah, no, no, we definitely will. But they will keep their shrines secretly at home. Is that what happens with Christianity? You know, the heralding of this new religion and everyone goes, no, no, this is terrific, but we'll just keep our stuff going the way we would have.

44:12Anita Anand:Keep Mars-Noans. Yeah. I think this is something that, again, we see over and over and over again when Christianity comes in, because the issue with Christianity is that it's saying, one God, you worship this and nothing else. And most religions outside that tradition are polytheistic and they're like, well, I mean, he can join the party, he can sit on the bench, but I mean, we're not getting rid of the bench. So it looks like, yes, there's something like that going on. There are examples even of this pagan votive activity at rural shrines in the same locations that you have villas with Christian altars, for example.

44:48So you've got this sense that even within the same household, maybe it's the same individuals who are swinging both ways. Maybe it's different individuals within the household. Maybe there are tensions as a result of that. You know, I'm not saying it's necessarily easy, but certainly it's not like everyone wakes up one day and say, oh, well, I guess we're all Christian now. And, you know, we can just push that bench out the door.

45:10Anita Anand:So we're going next to the conversion of Ireland, St. Patrick, who's born in Britain and takes Christianity with them. That's going to be in our next episode. But as we see when you come back later in the series, this isn't the end of paganism. There's a whole new chapter of paganism waiting to unfold. So anyway, lots more porridge and many more raisins to come.

45:36William Dalrymple:Porridge for everyone. Anyway, listen, thank you very much. Well, you'll be back. And of course, if you want to listen to that, if you want to get early access to things, extra bonus episodes, join our club, empirepoduk.com, empirepoduk.com. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand.

45:55Anita Anand:And goodbye from me, William Durimple.

46:25Anita Anand:You know, we're in an era defined by depolarization and American institutions are breaking under Donald Trump. Cady and I will be live on stage breaking down what's really happening, sharing insider perspectives and answering your questions.

46:42William Dalrymple:This October, we're heading to Toronto, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., a host of other American cities to get into all of the political action. We would love to see you there. Come and join us.

46:52Anita Anand:So head to the restispoliticsus.com to get your tickets and come see us live.