Building on the themes of regionality in Chapter 4, and of empire in Chapter 3, this chapter focuses on Aquae Sulis’s place in the social, religious, and artistic networks of Britain, Gaul, and Germany specifically, and on how to put the site’s locally specific practices in dialogue with broader trends. It explores the significance of artistic connections seen in smaller iconographic works such as the ‘altar’ blocks, which can be linked to Viergöttersteine from the Rhineland, and the relief of Mercury with a local goddess, which is part of a regional cluster centred on Gloucester, and uses a series of case studies, in particular the ‘curse tablets’, to delineate the ways in which provincial religious knowledge may be characterized as a series of increasingly localized concentric circles of practice.

This chapter focuses on the historical and intellectual context of the discovery and interpretation of Roman remains at Bath in the 18th and 19th century. It explores these contexts through two extended case studies in particular: 18th and early 19th century reactions to the Bath Gorgon, and the personal and professional networks of James T. Irvine, a prominent member of the Bath antiquarian community in the second half of the 19th century.

This chapter examines the position of Sulis Minerva and her sanctuary within the wider networks of empire and how Roman imperialism was negotiated in different ways throughout the site’s history. It starts by arguing that the foundation of the sanctuary in the Flavian period should be read primarily as an imperialist act designed to proclaim ownership of an indigenous sacred site; this is supported by the iconography datable to this period, especially the pediment of the temple. While this emphasis on imperial domination faded in later periods, Aquae Sulis continued to be a place where individuals, especially soldiers, used the worship of Sulis, and in particular epigraphy linking the deity to the imperial cult, to structure their identity and relationship to the emperor specifically and broader conceptions of empire more generally. The possibility that some of the votives from the sacred spring reflect similar concerns is also explored. Comparative material from other sites in Britain and Gaul is woven into the discussion throughout, and used to argue for a broad understanding of the pervasiveness of emperor-worship and the imperial cult in provincial religion.

This final chapter draws together the themes from the previous chapters to discuss the place of Roman Aquae Sulis as a whole. It then examines the archaeological evidence for the sanctuary’s decay and eventual abandonment in the context of our broader understanding of late- and sub-Roman Britain, and finishes by looking at the Old English poem ‘The Ruin’, thus bringing the story full-circle back to the Middle Ages and the rise of Bath as a healing spa.

This chapter builds on Chapter 1’s exploration of the ways in which the Roman past became linked to the identity of the Georgian and Victorian present, by focusing in particular on the development of a healing sanctuary narrative. It is argued that the concept of Aquae Sulis as a healing sanctuary results from the modern and pre-modern nature of the spa at Bath, rather than from the archaeological evidence for the Roman period.