Celtic Wales by Aldhouse-Green Miranda & Howell Ray

Author:Aldhouse-Green, Miranda & Howell, Ray [Aldhouse-Green, Miranda]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781786830456
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Published: 2017-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Religious life

When the Romans occupied Britain, they brought with them both the ‘iconographic habit’ and the ‘epigraphic habit’, along with the tradition of venerating the supernatural forces in sacred buildings – temples – which conformed to a formalized architectural convention, marking them out as unequivocally associated with religion and ritual. Although the pre-Roman Britons (and their nearest neighbours in Gaul) did sometimes fashion images of their gods in wood and, occasionally, in stone, there is no doubt that the Roman occupation of these lands resulted in a vast increase in this kind of tangible acknowledgement of a spirit-world inhabited by deities who were perceived as more or less resembling humans. Alongside this developed tradition of depicting divine images, the Romans introduced the idea of setting up inscribed dedications which, for the first time, identified gods and goddesses by name. It may be that such formalization of the supernatural world, involving codification of divine identity by means of depiction and nomenclature in the permanence of stone, actually influenced the manner in which the gods were perceived and venerated. It may also be that the huge range of sacred images, with no apparent Iron Age forebears, that appeared in Britain and Gaul during the Roman period represented a deliberate invention of a new Gallo-British pantheon, as a reaction to the introduction of intrusive Roman cults and in a vigorous reassertion of ‘Celtic’ identity. This may account for the presence of god-forms – like those of Epona and Hammer-God – who, though apparently worshipped and depicted for the first time after the Roman conquest, bore little resemblance to any members of the Graeco-Roman pantheon.

Deities

The Roman army brought their gods with them to Wales. Jupiter, Fortuna, Mercury and other divinities originating from Italy were venerated, for instance, at Caerleon. Alongside divinities of Mediterranean origin, the troops introduced the more exotic cult of Mithras, a saviour-god of Persian origin, and mithraea are known to have been established at Caerleon and Segontium. But it is interesting to observe that – even in Roman military installations – there is evidence for the worship of deities that were either indigenous to Britain or, more likely, were imported from Gaul. Soldiers took care to pay homage not only to the state-gods of Rome but also to the spirits of their homeland and of the new territory they were occupying. Some of the antefixes (triangular clay tiles that fitted onto the gable-ends of roofs) found at Caerleon were adorned with human faces accompanied by celestial symbols, including solar wheels. From archaeological evidence, it is possible to identify a Gallo-British celestial god whose emblem was a spoked wheel and who was venerated throughout western Europe in both pre-Roman and Roman periods. It is noteworthy, too, that another Gaulish sky-god, a thunderer named Taranis, was worshipped in the legionary fortress at Chester.

The few images of divinities that are probably of Iron Age date (see chapter 2) are devoid of specific symbolism, thus making it impossible to link the iconography with any functional identification.

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