Hadrian's Wall by Nick Hodgson

Author:Nick Hodgson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719821592
Publisher: Crowood

Military Religion

The religious beliefs and concerns discussed in the previous chapter continued to be to the fore for the Romans manning the Wall, and indeed, for the civilian communities that enveloped them. The increasing prevalence of stone construction and inscriptions following the restoration of the frontier in the 160s brings with it a growing amount of evidence for both official and unofficial religious cults, making the early third century an age of pagan splendour on the Wall.

The ‘official’ dedications to Jupiter at Maryport come to an abrupt end in the 160s, but there is one more similar series, probably emanating from an area 100m (109yd) east of the fort at Birdoswald (site of another Jupiter temple?), third century in date, where the number of dedications to Jupiter exceeds that at Maryport. The calendar from Dura Europos, mentioned in the last chapter, if correctly interpreted as a military document, shows that the schedule of official religious observances, as old as the time of Augustus, was still current in the 220s.

Moving from the ‘official’ to the ‘unofficial’, what is most striking is the wide range of deities and combinations of deities attested in the diverse community of the Wall in its heyday. The cult of Jupiter Dolichenus merged the Roman god Jupiter with an all-powerful sky god originating in Asia Minor. It co-existed with the worship of Jupiter alone and of other merged versions of Jupiter, and by the third century was popular throughout the Roman army. The god appeared in cult effigy in his temples standing on the back of a bull brandishing an axe and thunderbolt; his consort, Juno Regina, was depicted next to him standing on the back of a heifer. A beautifully carved fragment of the Juno Regina statue survives at Chesters, where inscriptions confirm the existence of a Dolichene temple. An altar recently found at Vindolanda depicts the god standing on the back of his bull. The legionary detachments stationed at Corbridge left behind them rich sculptural evidence for the Dolichene cult, though little is known of its liturgy. Its temples were fitted out for dining, since participation in ritual meals was an important element of what went on.

The only Dolichene temple to be located with certainty on the Wall is at Vindolanda, where the building was found built into the rampart space within the walls of the fort, a remarkable discovery, as the normal expectation is that temples, especially of ‘unofficial’ cults, would be located outside. Although it remains uncertain whether the Vindolanda Dolichenum had been situated within the fort during the whole of the third century, or whether it was moved there following the abandonment of the vicus around 260, rampart areas are an under-explored part of fort anatomy, and there are hints that other temples might await discovery in similar positions: a row of three altar bases was found in situ in the rampart backing at Housesteads, while three altars to Minerva were found together ‘in the ruins of a large building on the west side of the south gate’ of the outpost fort at High Rochester.

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