384. The Roman Invasion: Gods on Hadrian’s Wall (Ep 2)

Summary

Empire: World History — Episode 384: The Roman Invasion: Gods on Hadrian’s Wall (Ep 2)

Hosts: William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Guest: Dr. Eleanor Barraclough
Date: August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this rich, energetic discussion, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand—together with guest historian Dr. Eleanor Barraclough—delve into the manifold religions and belief systems that converged on Hadrian’s Wall during the Roman occupation of Britain. The episode vividly explores religious syncretism: how the Romans merged their gods with local Celtic deities, the arrival and integration of Persian mystery cults like Mithraism, the everyday worship practices of soldiers and civilians, the rise of Christianity, and the preservation (and rump resistance) of indigenous belief systems.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Paradox of Roman Religious Tolerance

• The Romans, infamous for their ruthless suppression of the political power of the Druids, were paradoxically open to integrating local deities into their own pantheon.

  • Eleanor: “What the Romans don't like about the Druids is this idea that they're a political institution, this indigenous network with the power to coordinate resistance to Roman rule.” (03:45)

• Roman hostility was more about political resistance than religious difference; human sacrifice, allegedly performed by Druids, was the main religious sticking point.

2. Interpretatio Romana: Merging the Gods

• The episode unpacks “interpretatio Romana”—the Roman practice of assimilating local gods by identifying them with Roman equivalents.

  • Eleanor: “It's this idea of the Roman interpretation of foreign deities... you often identify [a local god] with its nearest Roman equivalent, give it a dual name, and then the worship can continue. But it can now be legitimized by its association with the Roman divine order.” (06:36)

• Roman soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall would voluntarily set up altars to local Celtic gods, reflecting personal devotion as much as imperial policy.

3. The Cosmopolitan Religious Landscape of Hadrian’s Wall

• Hadrian’s Wall was a melting pot: altars and relics bear witness to Celtic, Roman, and even Persian gods, showing “incredible religious variety” (09:49).
• The army itself was highly multicultural, bringing North African, Syrian, Spanish, and Gallic gods alongside local and Roman ones.

4. The Sacred Spa of Bath (Aquae Sulis)

• Bath was sacred long before the Romans; the hot springs were likely revered by local Britons.
• Romans merged Sulis, possibly a Celtic sun or healing goddess, with their own Minerva:
  • Eleanor: “We think that the deity involved there is Sulis... and so that's why we think it's Sulis. We don’t have pre-Roman evidence that it is in terms of Sulis as a name, possibly it’s connected to a proto-Celtic root meaning something like sun.” (13:30)
• The region’s curse tablets—written appeals to the goddess to punish minor thieves—offer rare social insight:
  • Eleanor: “They are carrying their grievances to a sort of Romano-British goddess, Sulis Minerva, in the temple. ‘Where are my pants? Give me back my pants.’” (19:29)

5. Local and Regional Deities of the North

• Discussion of Coventina, a powerful local spring goddess at Carrawburgh, depicted with nymph-like attendants and the distinctive triple-goddess motif.
  • “She is an incredible native goddess from Roman Britain... not even local to the wall. She seems to be local to one part of the wall.” (21:39)
• Antenociticus: A “Geordie god” (with distinctive horn-like hair), found near Newcastle—linked through iconography to broader Celtic motifs like torcs (prestige necklaces).

6. Fusion of Art Styles

• Unique “fusion fashion” objects (e.g., Dragonesque brooches with enamel inlay) found at Vindolanda, where Celtic and Roman artistic motifs mingle: “There’s this amazing swirling mass of laten style artwork on there too.” (35:10)

7. From Roman to Christian Britain

• Christianity's arrival in Britain tracked the same channels as other eastern cults, via merchants and soldiers.
• Early Christian evidence is scant but includes Britain’s first martyr, St. Alban, and emergence of Christian symbolism (e.g., the Chi-Rho) linked to British-born Emperor Constantine.
  • Eleanor: “Christianity, up to this point, has been a persecuted religion or a legal religion, subversive in quite a similar way to when we were talking about the Druids.” (42:30)
• Despite state endorsement, religious “double-dealing” was common; many households likely maintained both Christian and pagan practices.

8. Mithraism and Mystery Cults

• Mithraism, a Persian-rooted mystery religion, had strong appeal among soldiers—a “testicular,” secretive, exclusively male cult practiced in cave-like temples (mithraea) along the Wall.
  • “Mithraism is one of the great enigmas of religious history... the central teachings were revealed only to initiates.” (38:36)
• Dr. Barraclough labels the zone a “porridge of belief” (37:54), as Rome’s religious inclusivity absorbed ever more deities.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Eleanor Barraclough (on Roman attitude towards the Druids):
  “What the Romans don't like about the Druids is this idea that they're a political institution... it's not that they mind different religions in any way.” (03:37)

• Eleanor, on religious syncretism:
  “It's, I think, much more: ‘Hey, we've got a long bench. Everyone's welcome. Squeeze up, here you go. And maybe you'll find a friend that you didn't realize you’re related to on that bench of gods.’” (10:00)

• On curse tablets in Bath:
  “They write a curse and they're like, ‘Where are my pants? Give me back my pants.’ Just imagine all these Roman Britons walking home through the streets of Bath dripping wet and naked.” (19:29)

• On the enduring complexity of British religion:
  “I think this is, this is a story very much of adaptation and where the resistance, that stubbornness happens, that’s where we get the friction.” (31:33)

• On Mithraism:
  “Mithraism is one of the great enigmas of religious history. And I think those who worshipped Mithras would have been extremely pleased about that because that was the whole idea. He’s... a mystery.” (38:36)

• On Christianization:
  “The issue with Christianity is that it's saying, one God, you worship this and nothing else... But I mean, we're not getting rid of the bench.” (44:41)

• On fusion objects:
  “[This brooch] was described as a ‘fusion fashion item’, which is, I think, an excellent phrase because it very much is based on the indigenous art forms that are there.” (33:27)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 02:05 — Introduction: Framing the episode’s central questions
• 03:37 — The politics of Druid suppression & Roman religious tolerance
• 06:36 — Interpretatio Romana: How Romans integrated local deities
• 10:00 — The Welcoming Roman Pantheon (“long bench” analogy)
• 12:41 — The sacred geography and significance of Bath/Aquae Sulis
• 19:29 — The curse tablets of Bath and lived religion
• 21:39 — Coventina and the spring cults of the North
• 24:35 — Antenociticus: Local Geordie gods and their iconography
• 28:09 — Mars Nodens and the Cotswold spa-temple complex
• 31:33 — Art, adaptation, and Celtic-Roman artistic hybridity
• 35:10 — Artefacts (retirement gifts) embodying cultural fusion
• 37:54 — “Porridge of belief”: Mystery cults and Mithraism
• 40:47 — Arrival of Christianity and its syncretic spread
• 42:30 — Constantine, Christianization, and dual religious practice
• 44:41 — Pagan-Christian overlap and slow transformation
• 45:02 — Preview of next episode: St. Patrick and Ireland

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Conclusion

This episode masterfully illustrates the fluidity of religious life on Hadrian’s Wall—from state-sponsored syncretism and the embrace of local gods, to the integration of esoteric Persian cults and the eventual (but far from absolute) triumph of Christianity. Rich in memorable anecdotes, tangible archaeological detail, and playful but insightful analogies (“porridge of belief”), it leaves listeners with a vivid sense of a world where gods, cultures, and ideas mingled as unpredictably as the British weather.

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Next Time: The story continues with the conversion of Ireland and St. Patrick’s adventures—porridge, and plenty more raisins, awaiting.

Transcript

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[Anita Anand]

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand and me, William Drempel. Coming up in this episode, the Romans arrive in the British Isles and merge the gods of their empire with the gods of the Celts. The Persian deities arrive on Hadrian's Wall. We're going to be visiting the Cotswold spa of the ancient world and we discuss the first ever Christians in Britain. And we have with us the fabulous historian, author Eleanor Barraclough to take us through. This is a rip roaring story.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Thank you so much for having me back. It was slight chaos last time, so I'm amazed you let me back on.

[Host 2]

Slight chaos is what we do anyway. The idea behind this series came last summer when, just after seeing you, Eleanor, in York, Olive and I started doing a walk along Hadrian's Wall, which I hadn't done since my 20s. And what really struck me was those museums at Vindolanda, which I know you filmed at, but also the museum I'd never been to before, the Great North Museum in Newcastle and the sheer religious variety of all these Roman altars put up by guys in and around the wall, but also the continuity, because in the last episode we had the Romans burning the Druids and massacring them all in. In Anglesey. And whether or not that actually happened, that was. What is it Tacitus says? Yeah.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yep.

[Host 2]

And what you seem to see in Hadrian's Wall is the opposite. You have lots of Romans worshiping Celtic gods. So how do we square all that?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

I think the key to understanding it is whatever happens on Anglesey, it's not so much about religion. So it's not that they mind different religions in any way. It's the fact that the Druids represent, as far as we can tell, and I'm sure this is very much what you were talking about. It's not clear because we only really have Roman sources, so they're very biased. But what the Romans don't like about the Druids is this idea that they're a political institution, so they're organized. They're this indigenous network with the power to coordinate resistance to Roman rule. And that's certainly true in Gaul. And Julius Caesar has particular problems with that. But that seems to be possibly what's going on on the Western extremities of Britain.

[Host 2]

Are those like a kind of Celtic version of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the sort of mullah network running stuff?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

This is. This is the possibility that they would have viewed it like that. Yeah. And the other problem potentially is that what the Druids, whether or not what this actually looks like, what is, as far as the Romans are concerned, the real problem with the Druids, in terms of their rel practice, is that they practice human sacrifice. Romans are fine with other sorts of sacrifice. Human sacrifice has most definitely been outlawed and this is something they really, really don't like.

[Anita Anand]

Can I ask a question about human sacrifice? Because, you know, in the films, you know, we've seen depictions of, you know, children being bad and normally children. I don't know whether this is held up by any kind of fact, but, I mean, who was sacrificed? Do we know anything more about the sacrifices?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

I think it's hard to tell because we're really reliant on Julius Caesar. We see it sort of perpetuating down the Roman sources, this idea. Bloody sacred groves where the bodies are hanging up and everything's very nasty. But then again, you also see that, for example, Battle of Teutoburg in, what is it, 9 CE. These are Germanic tribes. They're not sort of what we might think of as Celtic tribes. But once again, what the Romans are saying, when these three legions get wiped out beyond the northern borders of the Roman Empire, they're saying, yep, they hung up the Roman soldiers in groves, they sacrificed them. So it's this gory. And I mean, it's fair enough, you say it's a kind of film, it's a cinematic version of something. It's not to say nothing like this happened, but certainly they are painting it in these Technicolor, in the worst possible propaganda.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I mean, it's gonna. It's gonna scare. So this. This is where the paradox comes in for me, Eleanor, and maybe you can. You can sort this out for me. Because Rome didn't like the Druids. You know, they were hostile to the Druids. You've got them in Gaul, you know, being suppressed and, you know, you've got. In Britain of Druidic practice, you've got Suetonius, as you just mentioned, marching to Anglesey to destroy the Druidic order. But then you also do have. And this is where I get confused, legionaries on Hadrian's Wall making offerings to local Celtic deities, which is something that the Druids would have done too. So what's that all about?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

This is it. So it's not about the gods themselves. The gods themselves, I think, as far the Romans are concerned, are actually quite a bit big deal. And this is something that we see more widely as well. It's more about. It's this. I think it's interpretatio Romana, this idea of the Roman interpretation of foreign deities. So as they're going through the world, you encounter a local God, you often identify it with its nearest Roman equivalent, you give it a dual name, and then the worship can continue. But it can now be legitimized by its association with the Roman divine order. So it's actually quite an inclusive theology, more than we might expect from what we think about when we think of the Romans versus the druids.

[Host 2]

How does it work in practice at an everyday level, if you're on Hadrian's Wall?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah. So it's this. I think it is this starting point that divine powers can be worshipped under different names, different versions of them, but they're fundamentally, as far as the Romans are concerned, the same powers. So you've got Jupiter in Rome, you've got Zeus in Greece, you've got Taranis, possibly, although the etymology is slightly different there among the Celts. But this idea of the Diu Peter, the sky God, the supreme deity sometimes sort of allied with the thunder gods.

[Host 1]

D is Sanskrit, isn't it?

[Host 2]

Yeah. And it becomes Jupiter when it gets west.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Exactly. And obviously I've got to get a shout out early, shout out to my Vikings here, because we've got the version there which is Tyr Tir, once again, is that same word. So it keeps on, reiterate, keeps on coming back in all these different forms. And this polytheism is the most important thing we have to remember because the gods, as we say, are everywhere. It's not just, these are our gods, it's our way or the highway. It's, oh, nice to meet your version of this God. Let's see what we can do here. Let's see how we can honor them within a context that is local and fitting.

[Anita Anand]

Right. So I'm always really struck by this, you know, first of all, the ability to suck in every local, you know, kind of belief system so that you don't feel so foreign to the people that you've invaded and you've conquered. Is it more political or is it genuinely theistic, where they think, you know, we've got loads of gods, plenty of room on this bench, move over, we can pull a few more in or repurpose them. I mean, what. What is the thinking?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

It's like, come on, everyone, in you come. We don't know. Possibly a bit of both. Definitely. It sort of. It helps if you have the locals inside. But what's interesting is that when we see, for example, altars being put up on Hadrian's Wall by, well, all sorts, but. But say Roman soldiers particularly, but sort of the community generally, they are putting up of their own, as far as we can tell, volition. They're putting up altars to local gods a lot of the time. They don't have to do that. There's plenty of their own gods they can choose from. And what we have to remember there is that. And maybe we can talk a bit more about the context, because here I'm thinking about Hadrian's will particularly. But when the Romans come in, they're not all coming in from, say, Italy, you know, they're not. They're coming in from all over the place. So it's already this very interesting mix of different cultures.

[Host 2]

And that's very much there in that Newcastle Museum you've got. We're going to come to this at the end of the program. We've got Mithras and all these very, very foreign Middle Eastern gods as well as the Celtic gods.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, Very, very Much that it's. I think it's much more. Hey, we've got a long bench. Everyone's welcome. Squeeze up, here you go. And maybe you'll find a friend that you didn't realize you're related to on that bench of gods.

[Anita Anand]

Is it remarkable that we' such detailed records of this? I mean because it was such a long time ago and as you say, it's sort of clash of civilizations. One is the conqueror. Normally conquerors obliterate everything that they've taken over. But we have, we have records, we have relics, we have real tangible evidence of religious devotion in this kind of mishmash, patchwork kind of way.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think sometimes we forget how lucky we are to have that. And Britain actually is particularly well evidenced as far as this is concerned. Partly because of. It's not just the wall. I mean Hadrian's Wall is really important, but you have these concentrations and Hadrian's Wall is an extraordinary example of that of military votive activity in one place. And you also find it in the urban centers in, in different parts of, of the Roman province, as it were. But there's also this wonderful thing which is that the condition. Because I, I love that there's two extremes because you get something similar going on in Egypt for exactly the opposite reasons. In Britain it's cold and it's wet and it. And that often creates anaerobic conditions.

[Host 2]

Anaerobics, nothing to do with keep fit.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

No, it is not.

[Anita Anand]

It is a lack of oxygen. It's a lack of oxygen, yeah. So things don't decay.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

And of course the reason I love, I love the kind of bookend of Britain on the one hand of the empire and then you've got Egypt is because it's very, very dry and hot. So it does the same thing but for the opposite reasons. And so what this means is we've got all sorts of wonderful organic material, but we've also got the stones and the metal and everything else. Thousands of inscriptions, hundreds of altars, all sorts of little objects like figurines and votive tablets and little cursed.

[Anita Anand]

Little.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

We can talk a bit more about the curse tablets from Bath because those are fabulous.

[Host 2]

Well, that's where we're going next. Let's go to Bath because I think that was certainly where I first came across this as a school kid going around the baths and then you've got, as you say, these little curses and at the middle of it you've got that big Gorgon figure who is Sulis, who's kind of half classical but also a bit Celtic with a kind of moustache. And he looks like the sort of guy you might meet in a pub in sort of Skye or somewhere.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I mean and we should say that Bath, you know, was aqua sulis is what it was known as. They wouldn't have, the Romans would not have called it Bath or Bath, they would have called it aqua Zulis. So yes, talk a little bit about that because likewise my children, it's the one place that they were transfixed when I dragged them around the country to try and improve them. They actually helped in Bath. They were quite into it I have to say.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

One year I actually made my now husband a birth birthday cake in the shape of the Roman baths. And you know we put little jelly beans, you know there's another year we did Hadrian's Wall, you know, I mean we're committed to this historical cause in this family I'm gonna say. But the lovely thing about Bath and I think the reason that it's so. Yeah. So enduring, it's so fascinating is. Well let's start with the landscape because there is nothing quite like Bath. And before the Romans arrived you've already got these hot springs and they seem to have been very important in some way relig speaking. But of course the question always is the evidence. And we don't have much evidence for it. It's not the only geothermal set of springs in England or in Britain. But it is remarkable for the concentration and the temperature. So it produces, I think it's like a million liters of water a day, something like that. The temperature is about 46 degrees Celsius. You would not want to be diving into that. And you've got to imagine it bubbling up from the earth. It's steaming, it's, it's red, it's full of iron. It's apparently inexhaustible. It just keeps coming. It keeps coming. And so for the pre Roman Celtic speaking inhabitants of the area, and I want to say the debunny, I think I'm right. But you will get the emails if I'm wrong or you can, you can check afterwards. But we've got the likelihood that this is then a divine presence. It's this idea the other world is almost sort of reaching up and through. And again you were talking about bog bodies with Ronald. You think of that sort of divine space between worlds. Well we've got it here except it's moving, it's alive, it's steaming, there's something really otherworldly about it that makes it incredibly important. Now, we think that the deity involved there is Sulis. And you mentioned the fact that it's Sulis Minerva, when the Romans come in, and it's this sense, it seems, of these two goddesses here being conjoined. And so that's why we think it's Soulis. We don't have pre Roman evidence that it is. In terms of soulis as a name, possibly it's connected to a sort of proto Celtic root meaning something like sun. There's also, I think there's an old

[Host 1]

Irish cognate, solis, sort of.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, exactly, Solis. It's there, you know, Sol Invictus. I think we'll probably come back to later if we go. So this. It's important, this sense of the heat and the light and the. I wonder whether that's what's going on.

[Anita Anand]

Well, there's also, I mean, look, this very happy to open a new branch of scholarship. But it also sounds like Surya, you know, Sanskrit word for the sun. Surya. So, you know, there's sort of that, you know, Indo European thing going on. I always find that really tantalizing when I hear echoes of it.

[Host 2]

And human sacrifice in Hinduism, too, until the 19th century, we've got to say

[Eleanor Barraclough]

there's nothing new under the sun. Pun entirely intended right under the Surya Sulis.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, I'm. You know, the beauty of Bath is that the earth seems to have given so much to this place. But it, you know, it was there before the Romans arrived. So the people who were there before the Romans, before they, you know, got their grout and tiling out, you know, did they also treat it as a holy place?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

We think so. We think that there is. You've got to sort of. You're having to compare it with how it works elsewhere because really, in terms of the archaeological record, we're dealing with the Romans, but yet it looks like partly because the Romans are linking it to Minerva, that there is definitely this sort of religious associations with it beforehand. It's interesting as well that they link Sulis to Minerva. So we're not talking about Venus or Juno or Mars, you know, anything like that. And we do see those elsewhere. Minerva's the goddess of wisdom and healing and craftsmanship. And so that identification possibly tells us something about how Sulis understood by.

[Host 2]

As a God of healing.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Exactly, exactly. So she's there already and we can possibly extrapolate. And that maybe also tells us something about how she's. And Sulas is a girl yeah, yeah. Sulis, again, because she's linked to Minerva, that. And because we then have this fabulous. The very famous she. Is it bronze? What's it made of? That incredible head that they found in a sewer in the early modern period that looks like it is Sulis, Minerva. This incredibly sort of.

[Anita Anand]

She's.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

She's so.

[Anita Anand]

She's fabulous.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

She's fabulous, isn't she? But she is Sulis, Minerva, she's not Minerva. And I think that's really, really important.

[Host 2]

And that takes us back to your curses.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Well, no, let's think about the Gorgons first, because you mentioned the Gorgon. So we think Gorgon, we think woman. Right? That's, you know, anyone who's. Clash of the Titans, all the rest of it. We've got a female Gorgon figure, but he's most definitely male. He has an enormous beard. And it's been suggested that he may. It's hard to know what's going on with him, but he seems to encapsulate that whole religious syncretism and the tension that's sort of held and embodied within that. Because the idea of a Gorgon's head on a temple is totally standard Roman practice. That's fine. But then there's something really Britonic, sort of Celtic, we might say, this wild hair and the moustache and this, like, glaring. I mean, I'm sure, Anita, when you took your children, your children are all just there staring at it.

[Anita Anand]

They love to be terrified by it. But when I looked at it, it sort of reminded me a bit of the Green man, you know, that you see stretching back into, you know, early British folklore as well. That kind of sort of, you know, hair that could be alive like grass or, you know, that. That kind of thing.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

That's such a good point. I've never thought of that. What. What I would love to see is because what people are now able to do, there's these wonderful research projects where they use spectroscopy to find out what colors these now gray pieces of carved stone would have been painted.

[Host 2]

There was a great show at the Met in New York last year with all these classical statues in these sort of bright. I mean, it wasn't very nice to look at, but it was fascinating to know what.

[Anita Anand]

I don't like it. I like my. I like my statues. White and gray. Throws me. Throws me when they get lips and, you know, blush and stuff.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Don't like it if we've got. I have no idea, but any sense of what the Gorgon would initially have been painted. So, yeah. Would he have been more of a fertility figure? Would they. Would his. His hair have been green or would it have been blue? Is he something to do with sort of, you know, Neptune, Poseidon type sea God? Which also would fit the context, so who knows? But, yeah.

[Anita Anand]

Okay, well, look, Willi mentioned curse tablets. Now tell us a little bit about that, because that really is a fascinating thing about Bath.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

The curse tablets are absolutely amazing. So they are written in Latin for the most part, but they do actually have some Celtic names or Brittonic names, you might say as well, both in terms of the thieves and the victims. And so these are ordinary people of Roman Britain. They're literate enough to write Latin, but as I say, some Roman names, some Celtic names, and they are carrying their grievances to a sort of Romano British goddess, Sulis Minerva, in the temple. And we've got to think about the sorts of things that it's like, you know, someone stole my cloak, someone stole my shoes, someone stole my pants. And you can see again, because they're bathing there, it's not just a religious outfit. They go there to get clean and they're in the baths having a lovely time, you know, eating there. I don't know if you remember, there's wonderful depression in. In a line outside the main bath where people were queuing up for their oysters. So they're saying they're eating their oysters, throwing them in a pile, having a lovely time in the water. They come back and someone's stolen their pants. And so they write a curse and they're like, where are my pants? Give me back my pants. Just imagining all these Roman Britons walking home through the streets of Bath dripping wet and naked.

[Anita Anand]

These are, you know, sort of curses. But they're not saying, I want you to kill the person with my pants. That's not what they're asking, right?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

It's more like, may this person not sleep. They. May they not have any rest until my pants are returned. You know, there's. And there's. There's other versions of that. There's one where it's, someone's stolen a ring. This is not one of the curse tablets. It's from elsewhere in Britain. But it's very much like, again, may he not sleep, may he not eat, until this person, whose name I'm just going to slip in here, because I definitely know who it was who did this, has returned my ring to me, thank you very much. So, and you get these things widely, but at Bath, it's just this Wonderful concentration. That gives you a sense of the texture of everyday life in this city.

[Host 2]

Back at the wall again, now we've moved from Bath up to Northumberland. We're on the edge of Caledonia with the kind of Picts making dirty faces and throwing insults over the moorland. What are the Celtic gods that the people there are absorbing into their pantheon?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yes. So we've got all sorts. It's. In some ways you might think of it as a microcosm of the whole religious Roman world, sort broadly beyond Britain as well, because you've got the Roman state cult, you've got the. The worship of the emperors, for example, but you've also got mystery religions incorporated from the east. You've got local deities. So it's just this bubbling, boiling melting pot of all these different religious ideas coming together. We've got some really wonderful ones. I was up there looking. It was. It was basically in one field you find this wonderful God, that goddess Coventina. And she is, or seems to be an incredible native goddess from Roman Britain. But she's particularly associated with a sacred spring at Corobra Fort which the Romans would have called broccolitia. And I cannot say that without saying broccoli. So I'm very proud of myself right now, if I've got that. But it's. She's very local. She's. She's not even local to the wall. She seems to be local to one part of the wall, but she's very popular there.

[Host 2]

There's a very good little. Little museum there isn to last year. Yeah. It's full of her stuff.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

I love that. I love. Because I always feel a bit sad when you see. And I understand why it happens, but religious sort of artifacts that have been placed somewhere so carefully that have been removed in the modern day from where they were because for me that feels like they've been removed from their whole context. The reason they were there. I always imagine the. The local gods just sitting there. Oh, they're taking my coins away. Oh, oh, okay. Never mind that. This one is quite nice because at least they were left here together. And thousands of coins she's got. And altars dedicated to her by Roman soldiers. And there's these, one very famous one, this extraordinary relief. And it's three women and they're sort of separated, but they're together and they're pouring out from these vessels, the waters of what seem to be her sacred springs. It looks like she's the one in the middle because she's dressed differently. She's almost got it, almost Looks like armor, but I'm not saying it is armor. But she's dressed differently. Possibly the two on either side of her are her attendants. Maybe they're nymphs of some sort.

[Host 2]

They like to do three of anything, don't they? The Celts. There's lots of three goddesses.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yes. This sort of triple aspect idea. And we've got other examples of that.

[Anita Anand]

I was going to ask you about another local deity. I hope I say it right. Antinocyticus did I ran at it.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

So glad you did. Not me, Anthony. I also struggle.

[Anita Anand]

The trick is, Eleanor, you run at great speed and hope not to get concussed. So let's talk about Antanasiticus, which I've now nailed. I mean, he sort of reminds me a little bit, and this is what I also find interesting, of a Mr. Tumnus type of creature. You know, that curly hair, two little horns, you know, it just shows that we have a collective memory that gets passed on one way or the other. Tell us about Antanasiticus. What is he for and who is he local to?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Right, so, yeah, exactly as you say. Imagine a little cute Mr. Tumnus type figure. Possibly he. He's from. Well, it looks like slightly further east along the wall. So he's known from the fort at Benwell. He seems to be a very local deity because there's this one temple at Benwell, or Condekarum as the. As the. Look at me running up to the name

[Anita Anand]

fast and hard. That's what you need to do.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Okay, so we can locate him somewhere near Newcastle. He's basically one of the Geordie gods. He's been described as. Which I love.

[Host 2]

He's got a flat cap.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, he's great. He's such a. So he's associated with one Templ and I think it's like three altars and a sculpture of him. Exactly as you say, Anita. He's got this beautiful. These locks of hair and then these two locks that just come round and it's like horns. Not horns, but they do look quite horn like. Exactly as you say. There is another one. And if you see again the sculpture of him, he absolutely looks similar. From a little further away, the fort at Binchester. He was found in this ancient rubbish dump in this midden. Someone put him there. And here again, he's got these two little pokey horn hair bits and he's also got this torque around his neck. And we might remember sort of the most famous talk wearer, Boudicca. You know, it's Cassius Dio quite a lot later, who says that she wears this torque, but we know from other sort of Brittonic hoards, for example, we've got this kind of torque, this kind of golden, often big, thick, heavy necklace going around. And he seems to have one of these. So he's already sort of signalling Brittonic local indigenous through this Celtic, we might say. So is this idea here that he's a local God, he's worshipped locally, he's absorbed into this Romano British framework because he's there being worshipped as the fort, at the fort by the soldiers.

[Host 2]

So in India, you have, in a sense, two tiers of gods. To this day, you have the big universal gods like Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu and Mardurga, who are all over the place. But you also get the little gods who have their particular hillock or their tree clump or their ferric walkters bubbling up red or something. Is the same thing happening in Newcastle or what would have been the site of Newcastle centuries later?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, I think potentially so, just given that there are local ones and they are definitely there. But then we also have ones that we might recognize their names of because they're not local in that way. And there's. If we sort of come off the wall for a bit, if we go south, we've got a really good example of this, Mars Nodens. And obviously everyone knows Mars as a God, so this is someone where we. We've got that. We've got potentially the local pairing with the not local that.

[Anita Anand]

So, you know, you have that pairing in. In Lydney, in. In Gloucestershire, which I know very, very well, actually. Yeah, beautiful place. Yeah.

[Host 2]

You and your fancy Cotswold holidays.

[Anita Anand]

I have a very fancy friend in. L got a very lovely place there. So tell us about that pairing. Who's Nodens? And because there is. There is a kind of. There's a very exciting link to Tolkien with. With Nodens, which I want you to

[Host 2]

tell me and Tolkien in this episode already.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I was going to say, I. I should really explain. I said, Mr. Tuminous, as if everybody knows the lion, the Witch and the wardrobe. Mr. Tuminous, as if he's our accountant, the podcast accountant. He's a. He's a Fawn character in a book you may not have read called the lion, the Witch and the Water, but tell us about Miles Snowdens.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

He would, by the way, totally have been an accountant. Would have nailed it. Yeah. So Mars Nodens is wonderful. Exactly as you say. So he's linked to Lidney in Gloucestershire and We've got to think a little bit about the context in which his temple there, or a temple complex. This is. There's big stuff going on here. It's basically like a spa, health resort, something like that.

[Host 2]

It looks like in the Cotswolds. It's perfect. It's the Chipping Norton set from the first century.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

And this promontory that it's up on. Oh, it's a lovely view. It's. It's overlooking the Severn Estuary. And we've got to think as well, you know, the 7 estuary has that incredible tidal bore wave event that happens. So it's already this place that, again, we think of, you know, Sulis Minerva. Same sort of thing here. It's associated with a place where we've got unusual landscape features, things going that the power of the natural world that you can actually see there. So Nodens is very much a British deity. He seems to have been associated with maybe hunting and healing and water. And also, interestingly, dogs. There's lots of little dog statuettes that are found there. And it's been suggested this is because dogs are associated with healing in the classical world, because, you know, they can lick wounds. So there's this kind of curative aspect to their presence there. And the idea is that this Lindenay Sanctuary, this. Yeah, Cotswold Spa, lovely place, is a place of healing. People come to sleep to maybe receive visions. So it's not all physical, physical healing, but very much it's this sense that they can heal their bodies and their minds in the context of this religious deity. And the temple has this long hall. It's designed for maybe a guest house. It's got baths, it's even got a little amphitheater. And so we've got this sense of Nodens as a healer, as a visionary paired with Mars, because in the Roman world, he has his own healing aspects. And so it's this coherent theological matching, we might say there. And as you say, Tolkien wrote a paper on him. Tolkien loved him. He was really young. This is way pre Lord of the Rings, 1932. 1932, exactly. So I think sometimes we forget that Tolkien was a serious scholar. He's a professor of Old English at Oxford, and within this context of him being this very serious scholarly don, he writes, writes a philological appendix, which I don't think is quite as exciting as what he writes later on, but sort of, you know, let's go with it.

[Anita Anand]

Well, look, we've talked about the pairing, we've talked about absorption, but what happens to, you know, the Celtic religions, fully formed religions. We'll find out after the break. Welcome back. So, Eleanor, you know, the Celtic religions, the Celtic tradition, poetry, art, it stands proudly different and, and in of itself, you know, you know, when you're looking at a Celtic cross or a Celtic, you know, sort of a piece of ephemera, is that also the same with religion, that it is distinct, stubbornly so. And no Romano British nonsense is going to get in the way.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

I think this is, this is a story very much of adaptation and where the resistance, that stubbornness happens, that's where we get the friction. But where we see. I think the Celtic art is a really interesting one because it's, it what we, what we think of when we say Celtic art is it's sort of laten style.

[Host 2]

We should explain that term because it's an important one. Latin is a place in Switzerland which is not somewhere we normally associate with Celts. If we're thinking of sort of islands, Scotland and Wales. But this art style begins in Central Europe.

[Katy]

Exactly.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

And that reminds us that when we're talking about these sort of Celtic speaking cultures, they are very much connected. We're here sort of in Britain and Ireland, we're out on the fringe of that. But that's part of the reason that it survives so long. And when we think of Celtic art specifically maybe the laten style, it's flowing patterns, trumpic spirals. And yeah, we see that often in say, you know, Iron Age deposit cultures, ritual cultures. If we're thinking about Battersea Shield. Battersea Shield, exactly. Thrown into the Thames, Llyn Cerrig Bach over on Anglesey. All these places where we see this distinctive style. Exactly. What's really interesting is that we know the Roman style is different. It's essentially naturalistic. It's more about the accurate representation of bodies and things. But what we see in Britain is this co. Mingling of these two styles in all sorts of extraordinary ways. And I was up on Hadrian's Wall, you mentioned Vindel. And I was making a program up there about sort of Celtic influences there. I mean, it is an incredible place. There's nothing quite like one of my

[Host 2]

favorite places is that everything you want from Northumberland in one sort of concentrated burst.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

That's it. That's exactly. And an excellent cafe as well, I have to say.

[Host 2]

A very good cafe with excellent coffee.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

So what makes this place so special? Why do you love it so much?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Oh, so many. Other than the cafe. Well, these brooches. So these, these brooches were found within the context of the Roman fort, the garrison, you know, the, the, the whole sort of military establishment there. But there's one, for example, it was this Dragonesque brooch. It was inlaid with colored enamel. Very gaudy. And I remember Andrew describing it as a fusion fashion item, which is I think an excellent phrase because it very much is, is based on the indigenous art forms that are there. There was another one, it was a little silver one. It had open lattice work.

[Host 2]

We should say that there's often more in common than we imagine. But you mentioned knot work. Kanita. But those Roman pavements have exactly the same knots that you later see on Celtic crosses.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

This is it and I think that's it. There is, there is often a lot more that is recognisable as we move between cultures because we don't have those hard lines between them. A really good example of that actually, because we. One has just been discovered sort of a couple of months ago they announced it. There are these incredible vessels that we find dotted around. There's some in Britain, I think there's a couple in France, a couple in Spain and the Spanish one's just been found. And they're basically, they look like they might be retirement gifts. They're souvenirs that come from Hadrian's Wall. But you see on them again this fusion of styles. So you often have the little turrets, the square lines of Hadrian's Wall with the stones, but then you have this amazing swirling mass of sort of laten style artwork on there too. And I think that's conscious. It's saying, look, I was here at this lovely exotic place and look at this lovely artifact I got when I retired.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, it's completely appropriate that a knot should, you know, tie together two different cultures. I think that's wonderful. But I mean, I just, I'm interested to know how the Roman religions influence back, you know, so how much do we find, you know, Zeus and Mars and Minerva in Scotland or Wales or Ireland? Do we have that sort of bounce back as well?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, that's a really interesting one. I think it's hard to tell. Part of the reason is because when we move outside the Roman centers, we don't know how much they are really being influenced by Rome that's come in and sort of imposed its socio political sort of program on it. So basically if you are everyday stuff like, you know, coming in from the hinterland and selling goods, you are going to have that. But if we're getting out from there, it's hard to tell. In the case of Wales for example, Wales is very much part of that Roman province for the most part. Lydan is very close to the Welsh border, for example. So yeah, it looks like there is that movement between. So about 100 miles north of Hadrian's Wall we have the short lived Antonine Wall, which is sort of the Firth to the Clyde line.

[Host 1]

Rough Castle.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yeah, exactly.

[Host 1]

Yeah, exactly.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

And Besden where they. Oh, we won't get into that because I, there's, I was reading recently this amazing study of the poo that was found in, in the latrines from Besden. Well, actually it is, it is relevant. Was showing you what the Roman soldiers were eating and how much of it was imported versus local. And so in this poo you have a microcosm, I think, of the religious situation up there as well, this movement between cultures, the altars there are very mixed, religiously speaking. But beyond the Antonine Wall, where you don't have that same sense of, of settlement, you have incursions, you have invasions, but you don't have, you have massacres

[Host 2]

on a big scale.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

You got massacres. Yeah, exactly. And very famously Calgicus's speech saying, you know, you make a desert and you call it, you call it civilization, you call it an empire, you know, but here there's the possibility that they are taking Roman artifacts, things like coins, and using them as votive deposits. So like for example, when they're building, well, new buildings, they're putting brooches and bronzes in these ritual contexts as deposits, but it's harder to tell beyond that. Ireland. Obviously they don't conquer Ireland in the same way, but Roman material certainly does appear in Irish contexts, religious context specifically.

[Anita Anand]

Can we talk about a thing I know that William's obsessed with and that is Mithras and the presence of Mithras, who is a Persian Far Eastern deity. But you do find him in this sort of porridge of belief that you're

[Eleanor Barraclough]

describing and quite prominent.

[Host 2]

A mithraeum on Hadrian's Wall and another one in Inveresque near the Antonine Wall.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yes. So these are really important and I should just say Porridge of Belief has to be the title for this series. That is excellent. I am totally with you. Mithras is just fascinating. So we have to remember how sort of cosmopolitan the legionaries station on the wall really were. So, you know, we've got North Africans, we've got Syrians, we've got Gauls, Spaniards, all sorts, stations. Yeah, this is it. And so they are bringing all these incredible gods with them. It's the things that travel with them

[Host 2]

in their minds and writing home for woolly underpants.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Exactly. So Mithraism is one of the great enigmas of religious history. And I think those who worshiped Mithras would have been extremely pleased about that because that was the whole idea. He's. It's a mystery. Relig. The central teachings were revealed only to initiates. They weren't written down for outsiders. And so we don't really know very much. What we know as far as we can tell, is that Mithras is this divinity. He is possibly born in a cosmic egg. I think there's one at the Great North Museum where he's.

[Host 2]

There is. He comes, pops out of an egg like a little sort of, you know, David Attenborough sort of starling or something.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

No. He kills a sacred bull in a cave and then possibly from the bull's blood, sort of the life of the world sort of springs forth. So it's very much this sort of rooted deep time cosmology. Now, in terms of those who worshipped Mithras, there's seven grades, which I think are linked to the seven planetary spheres. And they move through these seven grades. And it's very hierarchical. You know, there's feasting and there's ordeal. It's almost mason like, I think that's probably the nearest thing. And the Mithraea, these temples to mithras are underground or they resemble caves. And it's where mostly, or I think exclusively really, men get together to. It's particularly popular with soldiers and merchants.

[Anita Anand]

Is it? Because it's very. I was going to say testicular, but sort of quite manly. And men associated with men. I mean, is that why the soldiers love it as much as they do?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Could be the hierarchical experts, they're like, yeah, I know what this is.

[Anita Anand]

I know what a regiment is. I know how that works. I recognize that.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Exactly. And certainly, again, I'm not saying they're like masons, but there's something in that sort of sense of, okay, so we know who to look to. We know who we have to keep on side. You know, there's, there's that sense of. Of wheels within wheels, which works very well.

[Anita Anand]

So, so we, I mean, look, we, we into this porridge, we should sprinkle some raisins of Christianity now, shouldn't we? Because, you know, it is the, you know, it is the newest religion on the block. How does that get sucked in? And where do we start seeing it?

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Yes, so Christianity, the raisins of Christianity arrive probably sort of. We can see them start to arrive in the second century. And it's the same channels that bring Mithraism and other Eastern religions there. So soldiers and merchants and, you know, it's the ordinary movement of people across the empire. And that's what we have to remember. This is a really fluid place. By the late second, maybe early third century, there are hints of Christian communities in Britain, but it's really, really important to remember we have very little evidence for this. We do have, so St Albans, you know, so what was Verulamium? One of the places that Boudicca attacks back in 60, 61 CE. We see there some of the earliest evidence for organized Christian communities because Alban himself is martyred there. The problem is we've got a whole range of dates to play with. This can be anything from 209, possibly up to 304. So. So the dates are disputed. But the point is the tradition is old and it reflects some sort of real event.

[Host 2]

And you begin to get those lovely villas in East Anglia with Ciro and the beardless Christ. The stuff at the British Museum.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

Exactly. And that Ciro is very important because we've got the Emperor Constantine associated with that. He's a critical figure, but he's also a very British emperor because he's proclaimed emperor at York in 370. So the legionaries have just watched his father die and they proclaim him emperor. And then there's all this fighting and then this culminates with his victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312. And this is where he's said to have seen this Chi Rho figure in the sky and like words saying, you

[Host 2]

know, by this sign I will conquer.

[Anita Anand]

Exactly.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

By this sign I will conquer. And what follows is Christianity up to this point has been a persecuted religion or a legal religion, subversive in quite a similar way to when we were talking about the Druids. It's that same sort of political subversion that the Romans really don't like. But suddenly we've got the Edict of Milan in 313, which legalizes Christianity. We've got the Council of Nicaea in 325. Story goes there that St Nicholas, who's basically Father Christmas, punches a heretic. We've got a lovely mug that says St. Nicholas punching heretics since 325 in our garments. But the point is that Christmas Christianity is becoming sort of very linked to the imperial machine. So, you know, and eventually it becomes the state religion.

[Anita Anand]

Well, what. What is interesting to me is that even though you have it as A state religion. We saw an echo of this when we did our Egypt series where you suddenly had, you know, someone deciding that we're not going to worship the gods anymore, we're just going to do the Aten the Sun disc. And everyone goes, yeah, yeah, no, no, we definitely will. But they all keep their shrines secretly at home. Is that what happens with Christianity? You know, the heralding of this new religion? And everyone goes, no, no, this is terrific, but we'll just keep. We'll keep our stuff going the way we were.

[Host 2]

Mars, no ones.

[Eleanor Barraclough]

And, yeah, I think this is something that again, we see over and over and over again when Christianity comes in. Because the issue with Christianity is that it's saying, one God, you worship this and nothing else. And most religions outside that tradition are polytheistic. And they're like, well, I mean, he can join the party, he can sit on the bench. But I mean, we're not getting rid of the bench. So it looks like, like, yes, there's something like that going on. We've got. I mean, there are examples even of, you know, there's pagan votive activity at sort of rural shrines in the same locations that you have villas with sort of Christian altars, for example. So you've got this sense that, I mean, even within the same household, maybe it's the same individuals who are sort of swinging both ways. Maybe it's different individuals within the household. Maybe there are tensions as a result of that. You know, I'm not saying it's necessarily easy, but certainly it's not like everyone wakes up one day and say, well, I guess we're all Christian now and, you know, we can just push that bench out the door.

[Host 2]

So we're going next to the conversion of Ireland, St Patrick, who's born in Britain and takes Christianity with him. That's going to be in our next episode. But as we see when you come back, Eleanor, later in the series, this isn't the end of paganism. There's a whole new chapter of paganism waiting to unfold.

[Host 1]

Mold.

[Host 2]

So, anyway, lots more porridge and many more raisins to come.

[Anita Anand]

Porridge for everyone. Anyway, listen, thank you very much. Well, you'll be back. And of course, if you want to listen to that, if you want to get early access to things, extra bonus episodes, join our club. Empirepoduk.com empirepoduk.com Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand,

[Host 2]

and goodbye from me, William Durrymple.

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