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DESCRIPTIONS OF CRANIA.
were a number of round-headed iron studs, the hob-nails probably of military caligoe worn by
Roman soldiers, but not by any officer above the rank of a centurion*.
Vase from Stone Coffin.—Height inches. Nails of Caligoe.—Actual size.
Bath was probably a British town before the Roman conquest. This would appeal' from
the irregular pentagonal form of the Roman walls, and from the worship of a local deity—the
goddess Sul—whose name is perhaps preserved in that of the adjacent hill of SaKsbm-y; whence
it has been thought that the Aquse Solis of the 'Itinerary' should be read Aquse Sulis. The
earlier name, as in Ptolemy, was simply " Hot Springs,"—Aquce CalidtB—'Yiara Qepuh. Under
the Romans, as inscriptions prove, these thermal waters soon became famous. What Solinus
says can only apply to Bath.—" I n Britain are hot springs with magnificent appliances for human
use. The presiding divinity of these springs is Minerva, in whose temple the perpetual fires
leave no white ashes, but only lumps of stone." In the last century, the remains of the Roman
Baths and Temple were both discovered near the centre of the city. An inscription from the
temple, " D e ^ Svi M.", compared with that on an altar, " D e ^ Svli Mineuv^," shows that
the British deity was identified by the Romans with Minerva. Sul is the Celtic name of the
sun; and, in Ganl, Minerva was worshiped under an epithet of the same signification,
" Minerva BeUsama," from the Semitic Beelsamen—Loi-A of Heaven—as the Sun-god was called.
This name must have been derived from the Phoenicians, like that of the Lancashire estuary
Belisama, now the Ribble, where are places stiU called Samelsbury and Salisbury, and where, at
Ribchester, the worship of Minerva and ApoUo was established. In the East, a male and female
sun-god were both admitted t ; and the female powers of the sun must have been the " DEA
SVL" of Bath.
Sul, or Minerva, held the first place, but the Sun-god himself, to whom hot springs were
often consecrated i, was also worshiped here. The large head, with radiating locks, in the old
city walls, resembled that of the sun at Polignac, where tradition places a temple of Apollo §.
The bronze head found in 1727, must, as Horsley thought, be of Apollo, and was probably
crowned with rays. The worship, at or near Bath, of this deity is at least established by Mr.
* Pliny, lib. -rii. 41 ; ix. 33 ; xxii. 46 ; xxxiv. 41. Such
" clavi caligarii" were found in Roman stone coffins, at Combe
Down near Bath in 1854. (Proceedings of the Somerset Areheeological
Society, vol. v. p. 136.) They were also found at
the feet of a skeleton in the remarkable Romano-British sepulchral
mound explored by E. Martin Atkins, Esq., on White
Horse Hill, Berks, in 1857.
t Rawlinson's Herodotus, 1358, vol. i. p. 611.
26,
Î As in the Oasis, Herod, lib. iv. c. 181, Pliny, lib. ii.
§ 106; at Clazomene, Strabo, lib. xiv. c. 1. § 30; and at
Aquae Apollinares, in Etruria. The worship of the Celtic
Apollo (Belenus, Abellio or Grannus) seems to have been
connected with various thermal springs in Gaul, .is at Aix-la-
Chapelle and at different places in ancient Aquitania.
§ Gruter,XXXIX. 1. Montfaucon,tom.i.sup.p.85.pl.32.
fig-2.
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n'-ffff»^ ftiijwrBfiir^ ••'nrr^^fm-ir'i iJi^-^-e^^'
ANCIENT ROMAN—BATH {AQV^ sozzs).
Scarth's identification of a Roman altar at Compton Dando, having on one side a distinct
figure of ApoUo with his lyre. The remarkable sculptured head, from the portico of a temple or
perhaps the baths themselves*, though variously explained, is we think clearly a personification of
the sun, or Apollo, whose recognized attribute among the Celts was the cure of disease. Apollo
Sculptured Head on the Pediment of a Roman Portico, found at Bath, 1790.
was worshiped as the Healer, whence the symbols of renovation among the hair,—the serpents,
which are likewise the recognized guai-dians of salutiferous springs, and of frequent occurrence on
the Roman sculptui-es at Bath. The wi-eaths of oak leaves and acorns may refer to native
(buidical rites. There is monumental evidence that Hercules, to whom hot springs were also
dedicatedt, was worshiped here; especiaUy in the altar having on one side a figui-e of Jupiter,
and on another that of Hercules.
^ There is no proof that Aqua; Solis was a Roman colony Í, though it was doubtless a mUitary
station. This last appeai-s from the remarkable inscription found at Combe Down in 185é, which
refers to the restoration of the principal military quarters—" Pmncipia"—early in the third century
§. It was probably garrisoned by the Second Legion, Augusta, whose head-quarters were at
Isca Silurum. At Aquas SoKs, too, was a guild of armoui-ers-" Collegium Eabeobtjm"—who
as shown by a sepulchi-al stone, gave a public funeral to Julius VitaKs, armourer of the Twentieth
Legion, a Belgian, doubtless of the very country on the confines of which Bath is situated
Other inscriptions show that Aquse SoKs was frequented by the sick and infirm from all parts of
the island, and even from the continent. A Decurión of the colony of Gl e^m died here, at the
Í As the pretended Richard of Cirencester says.
§ It bears the names of Elagabalus—" Marcos Au r e l i u s
ANTONiNDs"-and had been used as the lid of a Roman
coffin, having probably been removed from its site, on the
front of prináfia, upon the death of that infamous emperor.
(Archseological Journal, vol. xii. p. 93.)
* The notion that this head is intended for Medusa has
been refuted by Mr. G. Scharf, Jun., who thinks it is a personification
of the hot springs. Archajologia, vol. xxxvi. p. 187.
Mr. Scharf s illustration is, with the permission of the Council
of the Society of Antiquaries, given in the text.
+ Herod, lib. vii. c. 176. Strabo, lib. ix. c. 4. §§ 2, 13.'
.\then. Deipn. lib. xii. c. 6.
26.
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