Silures E-Book

Ray Howell

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 278

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

'There are huge gaps in our understanding of the lives of the Silures … Despite what is in many instances a glaring lack of evidence, I've increasingly become convinced that trying to tease out what we can about the social structure of these people offers one of our best avenues to understanding them better.' Silures explores exciting new discoveries and changing interpretations to give an up-to-date analysis of the Iron Age peoples of south-east Wales. From 'the study of stuff', new evidence of trade and commerce and archaeological discoveries, to the suggestion of a new research agenda and a consideration of Silurian resonances in modern Wales, Ray Howell's insights are based on personal observations and his own research activities, including excavations in the Silurian region.

Leseprobe

i Jadwiga am bopeth;David a Hannah, yn arbennig ar gyfer y lluniau;a Maia and Hailee, a anwyd yma yn Brynheulog,ym ngwlad y Silures.

First published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Ray Howell, 2022

The right of Ray Howell to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9988 5

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Introduction

1 Tacitus plus

2 Inscriptions: What’s in a name?

3 Art and artefacts: ‘The study of stuff’

4 Trade and commerce: Wheels and keels

5 Commerce: The daily grind

6 The Silures at home: Life in the round

7 The hills were alive

8 Belief: A world of spirits?

9 What did they ever do for us?

10 Not very dark at all

11 Face to face?

12 Clans and clusters: A research strategy

Conclusion

Notes and further reading

Appendix

Introduction

Just over a decade ago, I wrote a book called Searching for the Silures: An Iron Age Tribe in South-East Wales. It was published by Tempus in 2006 and subsequently reprinted, with minor tweaks and updates, by the History Press in 2009. Now, more than ten years later, I’ve decided that it’s time, in light of new research and new thoughts, to revisit the investigation of the Iron Age peoples of south-east Wales.

In part, this is a response to the Covid lockdown of 2020 – but only in part. The notion of huge amounts of time generated by the lockdown has not materialised, at least not here at Brynheulog. With many board and committee meetings held by means of the once novel, now commonplace, medium of Zoom, and plenty to do in the woods and fields on the smallholding where I live, the opposite has been the case. Nevertheless, the lockdown has provided an excuse for pressing on with something that has been on my mind for some time.

This book is a departure in several respects. One is that, freed from the prescriptive restraints of things like the Research Assessment Exercise, I don’t feel compelled to write formally, in the third person with copious footnotes – I’ll simply report what I and others have been doing with regard to the study of the Silures and invite you to join in consideration of what new evidence and new approaches may mean. I’ve also decided to put notes, with bibliographical references where helpful, at the end of the book to help ‘maintain the flow’.

In starting to write, I was reminded of a Time Team episode from not so very long ago. I’d been involved in several programmes for the Channel 4 UK series and had enjoyed doing them but I was particularly pleased when a producer rang to see if I’d come on board for a hillfort episode to be filmed near Cardiff. He said ‘We’d like to have you as our Silures expert’!

I definitely liked the sound of that. I had written the first book but didn’t really put myself in that category. I was flattered to think that they wanted to. Needless to say, I agreed straight away.

Filming was fun but, as usual, it was also quite hard work and the first day was a long one. I didn’t live that far from the site and had decided to drive in early but spend the nights at home. That evening as I entered the village and started up the hill to Brynheulog I felt one of those ‘magnetic tugs’ – you may have experienced them. They draw you toward the village pub!

It was a quiet night with only a few locals in. After an exchange of pleasantries, John, who was keeping the pub at the time, announced that he had a new guest ale on, asking if I wanted to try it. My response was that I wasn’t sure – what was it? It turned out to be the Celt Brewery’s new offering called Silures!

I took that as fate and said yes, I’d definitely better have a pint of that. But the best was still to come. As he pulled the pint, John mused ‘funny name – do you know anything about it?’ Well, there’s an invitation. Inevitably there followed a little chat over the bar about Silures. There is a sense in which that’s exactly what I want to do in this book. Let’s have a not overly academic chat – you’ll have to provide your own pint.

It is important to stress that in this ‘chat’ we will be looking for what a range of evidence might mean. The Silures remain an ‘open book’ in many respects and, no doubt, will continue to do so. This is not a comprehensive or definitive study – it is an exploration of possibilities. The last book was ‘searching for the Silures’; this one is not a volume that we can call ‘Silures, found them!’

Through the years I have spent a lot of time marking Iron Age study essays by undergraduates; I often thought it would save time to have a stamp made saying ‘No it doesn’t’. It could have been used every time that a ‘this shows that’, ‘this proves that’, ‘this makes it clear that’ appeared with some explanation or another. Archaeological evidence seldom proves – it tends to indicate. We are trying to find the best explanations that we can that are consistent with the evidence presently available. That is what this volume will endeavour to do.

Before moving on, I had better note that undergraduate essays weren’t always filled with attempts to leap to unwarranted conclusions. Some were incisive and interesting. Others were just interesting for different reasons. I remember fondly essays like the one that informed me that in Britain, Iron Age sites were often ‘surrounded by steaks’! Sounds tasty but, while the Silures may well have managed a stake or two, I’m not convinced about that.

A final introductory note is worth stressing. In many of the chapters to come, we will be thinking about the structure of this society. That may seem ambitious – possibly overly ambitious. However, I like the idea of examining ‘structures of society’. There are huge gaps in our understanding of the lives of the Silures. The limitations of our understanding of the structures of their society are even greater. Despite what is in many instances a glaring lack of evidence, I’ve increasingly become convinced that trying to tease out what we can about the social structure of these people offers one of our best avenues to understanding them better.

This will be a main objective of the text that follows. I used to start Iron Age modules by telling students, ‘You will find that the answer to many of your questions is we don’t know. If you find that frustrating you might prefer a different module; if, like me you find it challenging and exciting, you should enjoy this one.’

There will be a similar challenge for the reader. Hopefully, you will be happy in the knowledge that we will be dealing with balance of probability in an effort to understand these people better. If you’re up for that, read on.

1

Tacitus plus

The best starting point for a discussion of the Silures is the historical record. In at least one respect that doesn’t take too long as our written record of the tribe, or possibly more accurately tribal confederation, consists only of the writings of the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus and a handful of later inscriptions.

Relying on a single source is never comfortable, especially when that source seems likely to be one-sided and, to a greater or lesser extent, biased. At least Tacitus was ‘in the know’ – he was eventually a senator, a consul and a provincial governor. Besides, we have to turn to him because he is the only conventionally historical source available.

He was also, as far as we can tell, not only well informed but also quite balanced. After all, in a speech that he attributed to a leader named Calgacus, urging on his forces before the Battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland, he describes the Romans as ‘creating a desolation and calling it peace’! What makes that description a bit surprising is that the Roman general commanding was none other than Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who happens to have been Tacitus’s father-in-law.

There is another issue that will concern some historians. Tacitus refers to the Silures in three of his books. These include the Agricola, which describes the exploits of his father-in-law, and his two main historical works, The Histories and The Annals of Imperial Rome. It is generally thought that both the principal historical works were written between about AD 98 and AD 105, in other words up to half a century after the events described in the territory of the Silures. So, we have accounts written at some distance from the events, quite some time after they occurred, by a potentially prejudiced source. Nevertheless, Tacitus gives us a useful, and at times vibrant, account and, as you have seen, it is the only one we have – so let’s run with it.

Caratacus, Caractacus, Caradog

The story of the Silures and their resistance to the advance of Rome should be put into its wider context. The initial Roman invasions of Britain, led by Julius Caesar himself, came in 55 and 54 BC. While he achieved some limited success against south-eastern tribes like the Catuvellauni, the campaigns were hardly a resounding victory and the subsequent Gaulish rising led by Vercingetorix put paid to further interventions in the short term. Arguably, Caesar’s more important achievement was brought about by his campaign against, and eventual victory over, the Veneti, a powerful Breton tribe that, with a well-established maritime tradition and a fleet of ships to match, controlled much of the trade to, among other places, Britain. The destruction of the Venetic fleet forced a new trading pattern onto British Iron Age communities.

The allure of conquest in Britain, however, did not disappear. It was certainly an appealing objective in the mind of Claudius, an unlikely emperor in need of a military success. When he launched his attack across the Channel in AD 43 he left little to chance. A huge invasion force led by the general Aulus Plautius was made up of four legions including three re-assigned from the Rhine frontier. The Second Augustan, commanded by the future emperor Vespasian, would one day be permanently based in south-east Wales. These legions were supported by auxiliary forces including cavalry and specialist archers. In total, some 40,000 troops were deployed in the campaign.

Not surprisingly resistance came, in the first instance, from the Catuvellauni. They were led by two brothers, Caratacus and Togodumnus, sons of Cunobelinus, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (don’t be confused by the plot of the play, which is, after all, fiction!). Preliminary skirmishing ended with a pitched battle, probably fought in the Thames Valley at a crossing point on the river Medway. Heavy losses by the Catuvellauni included Togodumnus, and with this defeat resistance in the south-east quickly collapsed. Caratacus, however, was determined to carry on fighting and withdrew toward the west with his remaining forces. He finally paused in the territory of the by now divided Dobunni, halting in an area controlled by a faction of the tribe still hostile to the Roman advance, possibly establishing himself behind earthworks on Minchinhampton Common in Gloucestershire.

This move brought him into closer proximity to the aggressively anti-Roman Silures. Not surprisingly, Caratacus and his band soon joined them and the whole focus of the Roman military advance began to shift toward south-east Wales.

From a Roman perspective, despite initial successes, Britain remained a turbulent and often hostile land. When Publius Ostorius Scapula succeeded Aulus Plautius as governor in AD 47, he found that he had to move quickly to try to stabilise Rome’s ‘newest province’. He rapidly dispatched troops to put down a revolt by the Iceni in East Anglia before striking into north-east Wales, attacking the Decangi or Deceangli. Tacitus suggests that the objective was simply booty, but mineral resources and a desire to drive a wedge between the more powerful Welsh tribes of the west and south and the Brigantes, who were on the verge of revolt in the north of England, may have been foremost in his thinking.

Ostorius soon had even more pressing concerns when he learned of the arrival of Caratacus amongst the Silures. He re-directed his troops and invaded the territory of a people who Tacitus tells us ‘neither sternness nor leniency’ discouraged from fighting. He went on to explain that ‘the natural ferocity of the inhabitants was intensified by their belief in the prowess of Caratacus’ who he says was at this point regarded as ‘pre-eminent’ among the British ‘chieftains’.

Commitment of the Roman army against the Silures forced Caratacus to make a bold move. He led his followers, now no doubt bolstered by the Silures, into mid-Wales. This seems to have been an attempt to bring the Ordovices, a tribe of north Wales who shared the warlike reputation of their southern neighbours, into the conflict. The Romans could see the danger and were determined to prevent that from happening.

With the Roman army approaching him in force, Caratacus had to decide his best strategy – flee or fight. Tacitus tells us that he decided to ‘stake his fate on a battle’. Caratacus was now a seasoned campaigner used to Roman tactics and he chose his ground carefully. The position is described in detail although the site of the battle is still unknown and remains a popular subject of debate. The 1851 edition of Archaeologia Cambrensis, for example, featured publication of a lecture given by antiquarian and barrister W. Wynne Ffoulkes in Dolgellau; he confidently asserted that the Breidden in Montgomeryshire was the place. The editor hoped that ‘the controversy on this point may now be considered, if not completely settled, yet at least considerably illustrated, – as far, perhaps, as the long lapse of time will permit’. That was a forlorn hope. Regular alternative sites have appeared and re-appeared over the following 150 years!

What we do know from Tacitus is that Caratacus chose high ground with steep slopes to one side and a river, possibly the Wye, in front with no obvious crossing points available to the Romans. The position was then strengthened as the defenders erected stone ramparts where the slope was less pronounced. Having secured the position as well as possible, they then dug in and waited for the attack. Caratacus is said to have moved among them psyching them up by saying that the ensuing battle ‘would either win back their freedom or enslave them forever’. Tacitus reports that ‘every man swore by his tribal oath that no enemy weapons would make them yield’.

Caratacus had chosen well and initially it looked as though the defenders might achieve a remarkable victory. Even before attempting to cross the river, frightened Roman troops proved reluctant to attack such a strongly defended position ‘dismaying the Roman commanders’. However, in the end discipline prevailed and, when the order to advance was given, the river crossing was made more easily than Caratacus would have hoped. The same was not true of the subsequent attack uphill. When the Romans reached the ramparts that the defenders had erected, Tacitus tells us that ‘in an exchange of missiles, they came off worse’, being forced to retreat back downhill having suffered heavy casualties.

In the end, however, it was the discipline and organisation of the Roman army that determined the final outcome. The Romans re-grouped and, employing their well-tested testudo (‘tortoise’) formation, advanced again. With well-drilled units creating walls and a roof of locked shields, the legionaries, now virtual human tanks, forced their way back up the slope. The close-quarter fighting that followed their breakthrough had an air of inevitability about it. The close formation of the legionary troops supported by javelin throwing auxiliaries was too much for the defenders.

In the confusion of the ensuing defeat, many captives, including the wife and daughter of Caratacus, were taken. Caratacus himself managed to escape and, still determined to resist, fled north to the Brigantes. By this time, however, the Brigantes were divided with a pro-Roman faction wanting to reach accommodation with the Romans and an anti-Roman group wishing to continue to resist. Caratacus went to the wrong faction – the pro-Roman Brigantian queen Cartimandua surrendered him to the Romans!

Caratacus and members of his family, along with other captives, were taken to Rome. There they would have had little hope – a triumphal procession through the thronged streets of the imperial capital followed by death, as had been the fate of the Gaulish leader Vercingetorix, must have seemed the inevitable outcome. It might well have proved to be the end of the story as well. Except, as Tacitus reports, Caratacus, instead of cowering and pleading for mercy, made a powerful speech in front of Claudius himself. It was a notable performance. I’ve quoted parts of the speech before – it’s too good not to quote key sections again.

Caratacus, we are told, proclaimed to the assembled Romans, including the emperor himself, that:

I had horses, men, arms and wealth. Are you surprised I am sorry to lose them? If you want to rule the world, does it follow that everyone else welcomes enslavement? If I had surrendered without a blow before being brought before you, neither my downfall nor your triumph would have become famous.

The speech made quite an impression. Such an impression that Claudius pardoned Caratacus and members of his family, who effectively became pensioners in Rome. There is good reason to think that he continued to impress. Another writer, the Roman historian Dio Cassius, described him later, walking the streets of Rome and marvelling at the scale of the place and its buildings, saying: ‘Can you who have such possessions and so many of them still covet our poor roundhouses?’

With that searching question, Caratacus disappears from the pages of history. Importantly for this book, however, the Silures do not.

The Silurian War

The narrative of Tacitus indicates that the loss of Caratacus made little if any difference to the opposition of the Silures to Rome. Indeed, if anything they seem to have become even more hostile to the Roman advance in the aftermath.

Tacitus reported that ‘in Silurian country’ Roman troops under the command of a praefactus castrorum were directed to build forts, presumably at this early stage marching camps to facilitate an invasion. But they were surrounded and were only saved from annihilation because commanders of neighbouring fortresses, learning of the attack, ‘speedily sent help’. The beleaguered force may have been saved from being massacred but their rescue came at a very heavy cost. We are told that ‘casualties included the chief of staff, eight company commanders and the pick of the men’. This quote needs a bit of interpretation to understand the size of the defeat. The praefactus, translated here as chief of staff, was the senior centurion; the other centurions, here called company commanders, would have been at least nominally in command of eighty legionaries (army re-organisation had reduced the century from 100 men to eighty). Tacitus doesn’t enlighten us as to how many soldiers were killed, but the death of the centurions that he does report suggests a military defeat on a very large scale.

For the Silures, this victory was just a start. They attacked a foraging party, and a rescue attempt made by Roman cavalry and auxiliary infantrymen failed. It was only the intervention of legionary troops that held the attackers at bay. As night fell, we are told that the Silures simply ‘faded away almost undamaged’.

Hit-and-run attacks became the order of the day. Tacitus tells us that ‘battle followed battle’ and concluded that ‘the Silures were exceptionally stubborn’. The Silures had begun a highly effective guerrilla campaign – a war that would last for a quarter of a century.

Tacitus describes what ‘were mostly guerrilla fights in woods and bogs. Some were accidental – the results of chance encounters. Others were planned with calculated bravery.’ He concluded that the ‘the motives were hatred or plunder’. The governor Ostorius became so exasperated by the ongoing hostilities that he suggested the only solution for such a tribe was utter extermination or transplantation to Gaul. The threat of a genocidal war of extermination seems not to have cowed the Silures. Indeed, they simply intensified their opposition.

Two auxiliary units, busy plundering native land, ‘fell into a trap laid by the Silures’, who sent their captives as well as some of the spoils gained to their neighbours. Tacitus was no doubt correct that their motive was ‘to tempt other tribes to join their rebellion’.

This war of attrition took its toll on the Romans, including their governor. With such a string of reverses, we are told that in AD 52 ‘exhausted by his anxious responsibilities, Ostorius died’. The Silures, Tacitus tells us, ‘exulted that so great a general, if not defeated in battle, had at least been eliminated in warfare’. The authorities in Rome will obviously have seen this as a bad situation; but, from their perspective, it was about to become even worse.

The Romans named a new governor, Aulus Didius Gallus. Before he arrived to take up the post, however, Roman forces had suffered an even more memorable defeat. The senior military commander in Britain after the death of Ostorius was the general Manlius Valens. He seems to have had the sort of idea that periodically crops up among military commanders through history – he would gain the glory by defeating the enemy before the new governor arrived. Consequently, he led a legion into Silurian territory. The Silures defeated the legion! When I’m giving a lecture about the Silures, I always like to pause and repeat that for dramatic effect – the Silures defeated the legion. Roman forces suffered many reverses during their imperial expansion, often at the hands of alliances of resistance groups. It isn’t that often that we find individual tribes defeating a legion. Tacitus makes it clear, however, that it happened in the land of the Silures.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tacitus provides a fairly low-key account, simply noting that ‘again the damage was due to the Silures: until deterred by the arrival of Didius, they plundered far and wide’. Nor is it clear from his description that they were overly deterred when he did arrive. The new governor seems to have decided that his options were so limited that he could only act ‘on the defensive’. Tacitus clearly wasn’t impressed with a strategy of simply trying to defend the frontier rather than resuming the invasion.

It was only with the appointment of a new governor, Quintus Veranius, that active intervention was resumed. During his governorship in AD 57–58 he resumed hostilities, invading Silurian territory. The incursion didn’t last long. Tacitus reports that ‘Quintus Veranius had only conducted minor raids against the Silures when death terminated his operations’. The Silures must have been delighted that they had seen off yet another governor. They were no doubt even more pleased when the revolt of Boudica came close to forcing the Romans out of Britain altogether in AD 60/61.

The Boudican revolt is beyond our remit here except to note that it was eventually suppressed. Unfortunately, we can’t say that much more about the end of the Silurian War. Tacitus was distracted by other issues and gives us only a cursory account of the end of the conflict.

What he does tell us is that in AD 73–74 Sextus Julius Frontinus became governor, replacing Quentius Petillius Cerialis. Frontinus came straight from a highly successful military command, suppressing rebellion in the Rhineland. Eventually he would gain considerable renown in Rome itself, becoming consul three times and holding the office of curator aquarum, with responsibility for the aqueducts that were key to the water supply of the capital. He produced a notable two-volume book, De aquaeductu, in which he provided a detailed description and history of the system.

With respect to his governorship in Britain, Tacitus simply informs us that Frontinus ‘subdued by force of arms the strong and warlike nation of the Silures, after a hard struggle, not only against the valour of his enemy, but against the difficulty of the terrain’. Frontinus went on to commission construction of the legionary fortress of Isca, modern Caerleon, which became the military/administrative centre for the territory of the Silures. With the emergence of Isca, war gave way to occupation and our historical account largely comes to an end.

2

Inscriptions: What’s in a name?

It would have been nice to have a more detailed account of the end of the Silurian War with some explanation and elaboration of the ‘hard struggle’ that occurred. Nevertheless, even the brief account of the campaign of Frontinus suggests an organised and determined opposition. There is little else in the way of historical accounts. It’s true that places like Caerwent, Venta Silurum (which, as we are about to see, became the Roman-era capital of the Silures), is mentioned in sources such as the Antonine Itinerary, which is probably best described as a sort of third-century road atlas, and the seventh-century Cosmography of Ravenna. However, for the Silures themselves, we must look to archaeology. Happily, one type of artefact can provide snippets of history – inscriptions. And there is an important inscription to start with.

Three, possibly four, particularly relevant inscriptions have an association with Caerwent, Venta Silurum. Indeed, two of them are, at the time of writing, prominently displayed in the porch of the church with replicas in Cardiff at the National Museum and in Newport Museum. The most prominent, the Paulinus Stone, is large, standing nearly 4ft (1.2m) tall. It is very important in helping us understand the development of Roman Britain generally and Romano-British political organisation in the territory of the Silures in particular.

The clearly cut inscription appears on a statue base (only the base, discovered in 1903, survives). It is dedicated to Tiberius Claudius Paulinus, the legate of the Second Augustan Legion, based in Caerleon. Dating from about AD 220, it tells us that the monument was commissioned ex decreto ordinis respubl(ica) civit(atis) Silurum (by decree of the ordo or tribal senate of the polity of the Silures).

This is very important for several reasons. One is that it shows that a civitas had been established in the territory of the Silures and a tribal senate was acting on behalf of the whole of the tribal lands. As we will discuss more fully later, civitas administration was a form of devolved government that the Romans used throughout the empire. Responsibility for aspects of local administration was given over to local authorities. As much of the captured territory throughout the empire was ‘tribal’, in practice that meant handing some powers back to tribes, no doubt with a range of strings attached.

There is also an indication implicit in the Paulinus inscription that tribal structures were sufficiently intact among the Silures to allow this measure of devolution. As far as we know, there were only two civitates established in what is today Wales: Venta Silurum, modern Caerwent, in the land of the Silures and Moridunum (Carmarthen) in the territory of the western Demetae. It seems likely that this approach was, from a Roman perspective, less a case of achieving good government and more an attempt to shift responsibility for matters like taxation onto local communities. Nevertheless, it tells us important things about the resilience of tribal structures and survival of native identity.

The Paulinus stone, pictured in the church porch at Caerwent along with the smaller Mars-Ocelus inscription to the right, provides ‘text in stone’ confirming the creation of the civitas and, by implication, the resilience of tribal tradition and structures. (Newport Museum)

It tells us something else as well. In the early third century the people of the region identified themselves as Silures. When I talk to groups about the Silures, one of the most frequently asked questions is ‘What did they call themselves?’ It’s a good question. We only have to think of descriptions like cymry/Cymru and Wales/Welsh, or other examples from farther afield like Lakota/Dakota and Sioux to realise that descriptions used by outsiders may not always be the preferred option of the people being described.

Some ‘native’ alternatives for Silures have been suggested. Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc, his bardic name), for example, uses Esyllwyr in his 1842 volume Hanes Cymru (History of Wales). The source of this attribution, however, is not very clear. With the Paulinus inscription, however, one thing is. The Romans called them Silures and by the early third century they were content to call themselves that as well. I’ve decided to do the same in this book.

Belief in relief?

There are two other important inscriptions from Caerwent, in both cases commissioned not by the tribal ordo but by Roman citizens. One, also a statue base, was set up by a man named Marcus Nennius Romanus in return for, the inscription tells us, freedom from liability for his college. Presumably this refers to an exemption from tax for a guild or some similar association.

What is most important for us is the dedication. The statue is dedicated to Mars Lenus or (‘also known as’ is probably the best translation) Ocelus Vellaunis. The statue itself doesn’t survive apart from ‘human’ feet, presumably those of the god, and the feet of a bird, probably a goose, which was sometimes associated with Mars.

Mars, the Roman god of war, was also a protective deity, which could explain an association with Lenus, a native healing god known from other inscriptions in the Rhineland, particularly the Moselle region that was home to people called the Treveri (the origin of the modern town Trier). Ocelus may have been a particularly important deity in the Silurian region. The association here is with Vellaunus, a native deity also known from an inscription found in southern Gaul.

The conflation of Roman and native deities is not surprising. The Romans were generally fairly relaxed about local religions, provided they weren’t perceived as overly secretive or overtly opposed to the imperial cult. Indeed, as we will discuss later, they seem to have been keen to identify and placate local gods. The best-known example of conflation in Britain is Sulis Minerva in Bath; and Caerwent seems to reflect this tendency to combine native with Roman deities very well.

This conclusion is supported by another important inscription from the civitas capital, one which now holds pride of place next to the Paulinus inscription in the Caerwent church porch. In this case, we’re dealing not with a statue base but with a small (just under 2 ft 6in or 73cm tall) inscribed altar.

There are six lines to the inscription. The lower three, which today are very difficult to make out, tell us that the altar was commissioned by a soldier Aelius Augustinus, an optio or second in command of a century. He was, we are told, happy to fulfil his vow. We will probably never know what the vow was but we are left in no doubt who the altar was dedicated to. The first three lines clearly and boldly name Deo Marti Ocelo, the god Mars Ocelus.

Given what we have already learned about the martial prowess of the Silures, it is not surprising to find conflation of a local deity with Mars. Interestingly, as with Lenus and Vellaunus, veneration of the god was not confined to the Silurian region. A dedication has also been found at Carlisle.

Boundaries?

The fourth inscription to consider at this point is not from Caerwent itself nor is it necessarily directly associated with the Silures. It is, however, local to the study and possibly quite instructive. Found near Goldcliff on the Gwent Levels, it is an inscribed stone now on display in the Legionary Fortress Museum in Caerleon. Not surprisingly given its find spot, it is frequently referred to as the Goldcliff Stone, although the description in Roman Inscriptions in Britain (RIB 395) as ‘boundary stone of Statorius Maximus’ is probably more helpful.

The inscription simply tells us that the century of Statorius Maximus, of the first cohort (presumably the first cohort of the Second Augustan Legion at Caerleon), built 33 ½ paces.

It is thought that the stone was designed to be inserted in an earthwork and presumably was associated with an embankment, wall or drainage/boundary ditch. George Boon, formerly Keeper of Archaeology at the National Museum, suggested that the boundary might have been separating the prata, a part of the legion’s territorium