ROMAN RELICS

Evening Star, Issue 19327, 13 August 1926, Page 4

ROMAN RELICS

MEW THEORIES OF OHGIR Now theories as to the origins of four fragments of Imperial Horn an statues found in Great Britain, involving the assumption of an unrecorded sack of York, wore advanced' by Dr George Macdonald in a paper wuich bo delivered at the animal mooting of the Society for tho Promotion of Homan Studies, hold at Burlington House. Hr Macdonald has been president of tho society for the last live years. I)r Macdonald dealt first with the colossal bronze head of tho Emperor Hadrian which was found in the Thames, near London Bridge, in 1834, and which is in the British 'Museum, This, ho said, originally formed part of a statue which must have stood in some puiblio place in Homan 'London- In connection with it a passage iu a letter written to Hadrian in a.d. 131 by tho historian Arrian, then Legato of Cappadocia, was interesting. Arrian was not at all satisfied with Oho statue which had been set up at Trapezius to commemorate the visit of tho Emperor seven years before, and suggested that a better one should bo sent to replace it, Ihd this indicate that the erection of such statues was _an incident commonly associated with Hadrians wanderings? If so, the British Museum head might ho° in ilho most literal ecnw>, a memento of tho visit wluch it was known the Emperor paid to Loudon. The soeoud fragment, also a bronze head, had been given public notice, but was not as well known as it deserved to be. This was found in ISO 7 by a lad in the muddy bod of tho River Aide, in Sufi oik, and was now the property of Mr E. R. Hollond, of Beuhall, feaxmundhara. It had been hacked from 'the body to which it belonged, and had! been subjected to considerable violence, but it remained' a strikingly realistic portrait. There could bo no doubt that it_ represented the Emperor Claudius, while its battered condition showed that it had been looted, and subsequently lost or abandoned. A closer examination contained tho late Professor Haverfleld’s surmise as to its origin. It was known that a temple ot the deified Claudius witnessed the last stand of tho defenders of the Roman colony of Colchester when Boadicoa and her host swooped down on it in a.d. 69. Tacitua mentioned the shrine as an object of peculiar detestation to the Britons aa a symbol of foreign domination. When ii vras stormed; the statue of the Emperor would be broken up and the pieces distributed as perap motal among the pillagers. That the head should have survived wai> indeed an extraordinary chance, but that this was the veritable head from tho temple seemed practically certain. Tho spot where it was discovered was some forty miles from Colchester, and' within the territory of the insurgent tribes. CARRIED OFF BY RAIDERS. Tho third fragment, likewise off bronze, was tho foot and lower part of tho right leg of what must have been a very fine gilded statue of rather more than life size. It too, hud been violently hacked off, and was obviously loot. It was found in 1820 on tho farm of Milsington, in the uplands of Roxburghshire. It remained in Dalkeith Palace until recently, when tho Duke of Bnccleuch made it; available for study by depositing it in tho National Museum of Antiquities iu Edinburgh. The style pointed to tho earlier half of the second century of our era. A statue of this size and quality would have been much more at homo in York or Chester than in any of the smaller Roman forts in the North of England, and has first impulse was to associate it with the disaster that had led to tho annihilation of the Ninth Legion in tho beginning of Hadrian's reign. York was the legionary headquarters, and the fortress might well have boon captured then. Last year’s excavations, however, gave no indication of the walls of York having boon destroyed at that period. Further, at this point tho arm of a silver statuette, discovered in 1793 in Lancashire, and now preserved by Major Astor, M.P., at Hevor Caetle, Kent, became important, A votive tablet attached to it showed that it had belonged to a figure representing the Victory of the Sixth Legion. Tho arm had, therefore, been pillaged _ from York, where tho figure had stood in the_ regimental shrine. But tho sack to which it testified must have taken place after tho disappearance of the Ninth Legion, for tho Sixth did not cross to Britain until after the Ninth had been wiped out. It seemed l highly probable that the bronze leg and the silver arm had been carried off at the same time by different bodies of raiders. Indeed, it was possible that a direct connection between the two finds might ho established. Along with the bronze log there was another object of • bronze ■which, on careful scrutiny, stood revealed as the globe on which had once perched l a statuette of Victory. These remnants of loot lent fresh significance to the complete rebuilding of the walls of Roman York •which appeared to have taken place in tho latter part of the second century. It looked as if tho fortress there had been stormed and sacked either during the rising which was suppressed by Julius Veins about a.d. 168, or during tho still more calamitous upheaval about tho beginning of the reign of 'OomrooAus, when Southern' Scotland was lost. In the course of the discussion which followed Mr H. M. Last (St. John's College, Oxford) thought it unlikely that the Colcheater head came from a cult statue, since other evidence showed that the Romans in producing statues for the chief positions in tire temples affected an idealising kind of art, which would not produce _ a likeness with all the human characteristics such as we e rnuroduced in ihe Claudian head. Another member suggested that the bronze globe, instead of being the pedestal of Victory, might be a Raman weight,