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Sarapis and Tutela: A Silchester Coincidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

George C. Boon
George C. Boon
Affiliation:
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
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Extract

The figures of Sarapis and the Tutela from Calleva, both of superhuman scale, were of a quality seldom met in Roman Britain. The head of Sarapis was found by J. B. P. Karslake in the garden of his house about 1 km from the walls, and without doubt had come from the ancient site on some remote occasion, when it was put to use as the weight in a cheese-press, an iron bar being let into the top of the head, perhaps in the very hole which had once taken a dowel to affix the vanished modius. The head measures some 32 cm from chin to crown of head; the beard of the chin, which would have parted in two luxuriant rolls to left and right, and the nose, have gone; and there is damage and abrasion elsewhere. The identification, however, is not in doubt, for the locks falling on to the forehead are an especial characteristic of portraits of Sarapis belonging to the Roman age. From what survives elsewhere, we can see that the artist cut well and deeply, and made great use of the drill. There are points of comparison with the splendid marble head from the Walbrook Mithraeum, and Professor Toynbee has gone so far as to describe our head as ‘very sensitively carved’ and the work of a ‘first-rate continental sculptor’ possibly of Mediterranean origin (PLS. XVII-XVIII).

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 4 , November 1973 , pp. 107 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © George C. Boon 1973. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Archaeologia lvii, 110-11. The late Mrs. Leonora Karslake told me that the apparently shapeless lump used to be lobbed about the garden by Col. Karslake and his guests in trials of strength, until on one occasion the moss and soil fell away to reveal the carving. The house, now demolished and replaced, stood at the north-east corner of Silchester common, and was a well-known landmark by reason of the upper storey ‘on stilts’ which Karslake himself designed.

2 For an original dowel run in with lead, cf. the Potaissa Sarapis-head, D. Isac, Ada Musei Napocensis (Cluj) vii, 549, fig. 1b. I sawed off the bar flush in 1951, as it appeared impossible to extract it without damage. There is no trace of the bottom rim of the modius, which could not however have been very wide.

3 J. M. C. Toynbee, Art in Roman Britain (1962), pl. 43.

4 Art in Britain under the Romans (1964), 93-5.

5 Castiglione, L., Bull. Mus. nat. hongrois des Beaux-Arts xii, 22–3Google Scholar, figs. 10–13. fig. 10 is the tetradrachm of Ptolemy IV Philopator, 221–205 B.C., which Castiglione suggests marked the consecration of the temple or the completion of the statue.

6 Calm, Castiglione, loc. cit., 33; melancholy, Isac, loc. cit., 551.

7 Loc. cit. (note 5), 36, n. 30. H. Idris Bell, Cults and Creeds in Graeco-Roman Egypt (1954), 20, mentions a letter of the second century recording a recruit's thanks to Sarapis for a safe sea-journey.

8 The best is G. Dattari, Num. Augg. Alexandrini, tav. 24, No. 2868, A.D. 144-5, clearly showing the trident of Poseidon.

9 Dattari, tav. 7, no. 2434, A.D. 138-9; see also Kraus, loc. cit. (note 33), 97.

10 Bell, op. cit. (note 7), 20-1.

11 Arch. Journ. xxx, 24; Archaeologia liii, 558-9. There are dowel-holes in the fractured surfaces: large fragment of head, 18 and 31 mm diameter; small fragment, 14 mm; lump from body (leg, 30 cm wide?), 48 mm.

11a The scale is c. 1½ times natural.

12 Cf. F. Heichelheim, Pauly's Realencylopädie, ed. G. Wissowa, Reihe 2, vii, 1599 ff. As explained by G. Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire (1970), 84–5, the Roman City-Tyche statues are derived from the Hellenistic Tyche of Antioch (Ibid. pl. 40). The Silchester head is the only one found in Britain. See further Heichelheim, loc. cit. For a relief of Dea Brigantia, curiously syncretistic, see Toynbee, Art in Roman Britain, pl. 77.

13 The corresponding chamber in the legionary principia (which undoubtedly served as direct model) was the aedes of the standards, e.g. at Gaerleon, G. C. Boon, Arch. Camb. cxix, 10, 19–20. In the fora of peregrine civitates there was no reason to install a capitolium. At some, e.g. Caerwent, Caistor St Edmund, and Silchester (Ins. xxxv) a temple lay adjacent, as also at Vidy-Lausanne and Mont Beuvray, and probably served as a civic temple in some degree. It is significant that the collegium peregrinorum inscriptions at Sil-chester came from the Ins. XXXV temple.

14 The Sarapis was given by Col. Karslake to the Silchester Collection; the fragments of the Tutela form part of the Duke of Wellington's loan.

15 The formal identifications are contained in letters of 8 June 1970 and 2 March 1972 from Dr. Dimes to Mrs. Greenaway; Reading Museum, Silchester archive.

16 Cf. RCHM Dorset ii, South-East pt. 3 (1970), 523, and Ibid. pl. 228, upper, for a local relief in the medium.

17 RIB i, No. 149, cf. No. 151, a British scultor [!]. Gems, perhaps cf. the ‘votive’ group, M. Henig in Cunliffe, Roman Bath (Research Report XXIV, 1969), 71-88.

18 RIB i, No. 274, pl. 6. The aerarius contributed 1 libra of bronze himself, worth 3 denarii (a figure no less interesting than the rather modest price named), about a quarter of the total employed. On sculptors in the Roman world, see Prof. Toynbee in Coll. Latom. vi, 17-33.

19 Cf. Archaeologia cii, 43 and for probably acceptable coin-evidence, Arch. Journ. xxx, 26, Archaeologia xlvi, 359. It was laid out before the basically Flavian street-grid, and completed later. I hope to discuss the setting-out and module of the street-grid of Calleva on another occasion.

20 BMC, Coins of Alexandria, No. 1298, pl. 13. The photograp his from a cast kindly sent by the Keeper of Coins and Medals. The regnal year Iε is in the middle right field, but is not easily distinguished.

21 J. G. Milne, Cat. Alexandrian Coins Oxford (ed. 1971), No. 444, pl. 4.

22 R. Haadved t et al., Coins from Karanis (1964), No. 160, pl. 2, 9.

23 British Museum, not in BMC.

24 Jungfleisch Sale, pt. 2, Sotheby's 9 March 1972, lot 68 (illus.).

25 Dattari op. cit. (note 8), No. 2855. A National Museum of Wales coin (= Dattari No. 2820) of A.D. 153-4 also lacks forelocks.

26 Dattari, No. 3770.

27 BMC. No. 1419.

28 BMC. No. 1561.

29 BMC. No. 1503.

30 BMC. No. 1764; Jungfleisch Sale, pt. 2, lot 175 (illus.).

31 Dattari, op. cit. (note 8), tav. 22, No. 4070; Paris, Cabinet des Medailles, No. L.3511.

32 Art in Roman Britain, 94, n. 1.

33 Jahrb. d.d.arch.Inst. lxxv, 88-99.

34 Rowe, A. and Rees, B. R., Bull. J. Rylands Library xxxix, 496.Google Scholar

35 Kraus, loc. cit. (note 33), Abb. 1. On the Silchester head, the first and second locks, on the right side, are very close and in Art in Roman Britain pl. 243 do not show as separate.

36 Kraus, loc. cit. (note 33), Abb. 6.

37 Castiglione, loc. cit. (note 5), fig. 6.

38 Kraus, loc. cit. (note 33), Abb. 5.

39 Kraus, loc. cit. (note 33), Abb. 4.

40 E. Esperandieu, Recueil général des statues, etc. de la Gaule romaine, No. 2671. It has three forelocks.

41 R. E. M. Wheeler, London in Roman Times (1930), pl. 5; etc.; the type of vessel is as Camulodunum 136A.

42 Archaeologia liv, 206-9, pl. 16; details from Joyce's Journal of Excavations are given in my Roman Silchester (1957), 122-3.

43 Gisèle Clerc, Revue archéologique 1966 pt. 1, 182. It may also be noted that the large base recorded by M. J. T. Lewis, Temples in Roman Britain (1966), 43, which he found on the model exhibited at the Calleva Museum, Silchester, is only the model of the altar-base found, the next year, 7·6 m axially east of the building; there was no room in the case to show it in proper relationship.

44 Archaeologia lvi, 237, pl. 11; Ibid., lvii, 95-8, pl. 8.

45 Lewis, op. cit. (note 43), 106–7, fig. 105.

46 H. P. L'Orange, Apotheosis in Ancient Portraiture (1947), 75. Cf. e.g. the fine metropolitan head of Severus from Maastricht (Römer am Rhein, Taf. 26) with e.g. Kraus, loc. cit. (note 33), Abb. 5.

47 RIB i, No. 67 is stated in a letter from John Collet of Newbury to Prof. John Ward of Gresham College, 5 Jan. 1744-5 (BM Add.MS 6212, f.37) to have appeared ‘as if it had been saw'd on the long broken side’. The stone (and the bronze frame) are last noted in the collection of Matthew Duane, Gough's friend (Gough's Camden's Britannia (1789), i, 141). For the frame, see BM Add.MS 6181 f.15 and for more ornate examples, Driehaus, J., Banner Jahrb. clxix, 424–6.Google Scholar

48 Assigned by Joyce to 296; whether he had evidence is unknown. The general probability is high; for the decisive battle, cf. Eichholz, D. E., JRS xliii (1953), 41–6.Google Scholar

49 Archaeologia xlvi, pl. 17, full-size, in colour; G. C. Boon, op. cit. (note 42), 99.

50 RIB i, Nos. 69-71. On 69 there seems to have been no mention of the place of residence at all.

51 On RIB i, No. 69 I read …]M PACIS for …]apacis[…; on 70, …]VM VI[CTO/RIAE…] for …]mui[…; and on 71, …] MARTI[S], i.e. signum, etc. Pacis, Victoriae, and Martis. I am indebted to Professor Eric Birley for discussing the inscriptions (in litt.), but must bear responsibility for the interpretations proposed.

52 The sculptural fragments consist (a) of the bent knee of a seated, draped figure; (b) a left hand bent at the wrist holding the butt of a decorated cornucopiae; (c) three pieces of two legs clad in greaves decorated with lion-masks; and (d) other scraps. The stone used appears to be varieties of Bath Stone, certainly not Portland Stone.

53 CIL xiii, 4679. The most recent discussion of collegium peregrinorum inscriptions is that of J. E. Bogaers, Ber. ROB. x/xi (1960-61), 306, n. 332.

54 CIL xiii, 6540.

55 Cf. Jones, A. H. M., JRS xxvi (1936), 223–35Google Scholar, with Wilhelm's restored text, 227.

56 F. Haverfield, VCH. Hants, i (1900), 275.

57 I am grateful to Prof. J. M. C. Toynbee, who was kind enough to read through this paper before it was submitted.