THE STORY OF ROMAN BATH by Patricia Southern
Author:Patricia Southern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2013-03-03T16:00:00+00:00
5
BATH PEOPLE
The collection of people’s names recorded on inscriptions and curse tablets presumably represents only a fraction of the residents and visitors who were connected with Roman Bath. Clearly there will have been some people who lived and worked in the town, and over the centuries there will have been many visitors who came for various reasons, perhaps on a pilgrimage, like Peregrinus, who felt obliged to inform people that he came from Trier.1 Unfortunately on most inscriptions there is no mention of the place of origin of the person who erected the stones, and even if people did include this information there is still no way to distinguish between residents and visitors.
Among the people who left some record of themselves there are soldiers and civilians, slaves, freedmen and freedwomen, Roman citizens and non-citizens, artisans and tradesmen, rich and poor. The resident population of Roman Bath was perhaps only small compared to the numbers of visitors passing through, but someone must have lived in the town to provide the staff for the temple and the baths, and the service industries that went with them.
Religious Personnel
The temple of Sulis Minerva, and any other temples and shrines in Bath, would require a person or a group of people for their day-to-day running and maintenance. Only two inscriptions attest religious personnel, one being the tombstone of Gaius Calpurnius Receptus,2 a priest of the goddess Sulis (sacerdos deae Suli), and the other a dedication to Sulis by the haruspex, Lucius Marcius Memor.3 The tombstone of Receptus was found in 1795 near Sydney Gardens in the parish of Bathwick. Since Roman law sensibly forbade the burial of the dead inside the towns, tombstones are regularly found on the roads leading out of settlements. Calpurnia Trifosa, widow of Receptus, set up the stone, recording that Receptus had died aged 75, and that she had been his freedwoman and then his wife.
This is the only record of a priest of Sulis, but it can be safely assumed that there was a long line of priests serving the temple of the goddess, perhaps even a college of priests all serving together. There may have been someone on duty at all times, attending the sacred fire, which according to the ancient geographical writer Solinus4 was never allowed to go out. Solinus does not mention Bath by name, but in connection with Britain he relates that at the temple of Minerva the perpetual fire does not produce white ash, but leaves rocky lumps when the flames die down, by which he presumably means cinders, indicating that the Romans burned coal at the temple. Somerset coal was abundant and easily extracted and was most likely used in the baths for heating the water and the hot room, and probably by residents who were fortunate enough to possess a hypocaust system. The use of coal in Roman Bath is attested by the discovery in 1867 of a pile of cinders in a corner of the temple precinct.5
The inscription recording the haruspex Lucius Marcius Memor was discovered underneath the Pump Room during the excavations in 1965.
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