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Knowledge of the Literary Classics in Roman Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

A. A. Barrett
A. A. Barrett
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
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Extract

The written sources for Roman Britain, especially after the first century A.D., are so scant that our information must come very largely from archaeological discoveries. While these have thrown light on many aspects of Britain during the Roman period, we are still very much in the dark about one important feature of Romano-British life, the intellectual and cultural activities of the well-educated Briton. It is in the fourth century that the problem becomes particularly acute; Britain escaped much of the unrest that plagued the continent and thus enjoyed an era of peace and prosperity, a prosperity reflected in the stimulus given to construction of villas on a grand scale and often with fairly lavish interior decoration. It is a period when we should naturally expect a parallel flowering in the level of cultural life. The sources, however, are virtually silent on this topic and we must base our knowledge on the deductions that can be made from the evidence of physical prosperity; a useful criterion of cultural and intellectual activity is interest in the literary classics, but while it may be reasonable to assume that in his schooling the Romanized Briton would receive some grounding in the major works of Latin literature, archaeology has provided relatively little evidence that this was in fact the case. The known examples have been so frequently cited and illustrated that they have produced a general impression that they are copious. In fact, there is prima facie evidence of only one writer, the poet Vergil; the allusions are limited to one of his works, the Aeneid, and are far from numerous. My present purpose is to provide a catalogue of the allusions in Roman Britain to Vergil's poem, to assess the evidence that they provide for a general knowledge of the Aeneid, and to show what I consider to be the special significance of one example, the mosaic from Lullingstone Villa in Kent.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 9 , November 1978 , pp. 307 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © A. A. Barrett 1978. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 I have not included highly speculative allusions to Classical literature, but reference should be made to Richmond's ingenious interpretation of a number of fragmentary reliefs from Corbridge (AA xxi (1943), 179–96).Google Scholar One, belonging to a pediment, consists of a group of the she-wolf suckling the twins (cf. Aeneid i, 275-6; viii 630-4). Another contains a faun, two trees and a dog; Richmond restores a nymph to the missing portion of this relief and sees an allusion to Vergil's line on the site of Rome: haec nemora indigenae fauni nymphaeque tenebant (Aeneid viii, 314).

2 Illustrated by Boon, G., Silchester: the Roman Town of Calleva (London 1974), 63.Google Scholar

3 In his 1957 edition Boon (page 221) notes that the writing suggests the cursive style of the second century, but does not commit himself any further than this. Dr A. K. Bowman has informed me that he concurs with Boon's hesitation to attempt a precise dating of the tile on palaeographic grounds.

4 CIL iv (1871), 3889, 4036, 4191, 6707 (certain), 1672, 2213, 4212, 4665, 4675 (possible), 3151, 4877 (dubious).Google Scholar

5 For other Latin tags used in writing-practice see Dow, S., ‘Latin Calligraphy at Hawara: P. Hawara 24’, JRS lviii (1968), 60–62.Google Scholar

6 RIC, 554-8.

7 The mosaic is illustrated in JRS xxxvi (1946), pl. XIGoogle Scholar; Toynbee, J. M. C., Art in Roman Britain (London 1962), pl. 235Google Scholar; eadem, Art in Britain under the Romans (Oxford 1964), pl. LVIIIGoogle Scholar; and Frere, S. S., Britannia, A History of Roman Britain (London 1967), pl. 28b.Google Scholar

8 Art in Roman Britain (London 1962), 205Google Scholar; Art in Britain under the Romans (Oxford 1964), 246.Google Scholar

9 Illustrated by Toynbee (op. cit. (note 8) (1962), pl. 259).

10 ‘The Mosaic Pavements’, in Rivet, A. L. F. (ed.), The Roman Villa in Britain (London 1969), 90.Google Scholar

11 Op. cit. (note 7 (1962), 205; (1964), 246.

12 Inventaire des mosaiques de la Gaule et de l'Afrique, I.i: Narbonnaise et Aquitaine, 1909, No. 105; Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1903, pl. I.

13 Saglio, C. Daremberg-E., Dictionnaire des antiquitès grecques et romaines iii, 2, 1904Google Scholar, s.v. musivum opus, p. 2113, fig. 5249.

14 Hinks, R. P., Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Paintings and Mosaics in the British Museum (London 1933), no. 84, page 56Google Scholar; illustrated by J. Liversidge in Rivet, op. cit. (note 10), pl. 4.6, 4.7.

15 ‘A Vergilian Scene from Frampton Villa, Dorset’, Antiq. Journ. lvii (1977), 312–13.Google Scholar

16 Meates, G. W., Lullingstone Roman Villa (London 1955), xv, 45–6Google Scholar. The mosaic is also illustrated in Toynbee op. cit. (note 7) (1962), pl. 229; (1964), pl. LX a.

17 Illustrated in Archaeologia lxxv (1926), 128, pl. 17, fig. 1.Google Scholar

18 Op. cit. (note 16), 38.

19 A similar device is found in a mosaic from the villa at Worplesdon, Surrey, illustrated in Archaeologia xxiii (1831), 398, 400.Google Scholar See Rainey, A., Mosaics in Roman Britain: a Gazeteer (New Jersey 1973), 165.Google Scholar

20 Toynbee, op. cit. (note 7), 201 (1962), 263 (1964), argues on the basis of quality that the figured scenes in both parts of the triclinium were composed by artists of continental origin and training. There is no reason, of course, why such an artist could not have completed a work according to local specifications.

21 The theme of Europa and the Bull is popular in Classical art in all periods. In terms of composition, the closest parallel to the Lullingstone scene that I have been able to find is a third-century A.D. mosaic from Sparta, which has the motifs of the two cupids and the billowing robe of Europa (G. Steinhauer, Museum of Sparta (1976), 84 f., fig. 34); in terms of style and execution, however, the Spartan mosaic is quite different. The motifs do not, in themselves, seem particularly significant; the billowing robe and the accompanying cupid are found, for example, on a Roman painting of Neptune and Amphitrite travelling over the ocean, illustrated in Papers of the British School at Rome 7 (1914), pl. xil.Google Scholar

22 Roman Britain (London 1963), 122.Google Scholar

23 Op. cit. (note 10), 90.

24 One must recognize, of course, the enormous influence exercised by Ovid on later writers in metrical technique and that some of the ‘Ovidian’ metrical techniques in the Lullingstone couplet may have come through an intermediate work.

25 Platnauer, M., Latin Elegiac Verse (Cambridge 1951), 73)Google Scholar notes that in his early poetry Ovid has little more than one elision in every five couplets, compared with Catullus, who averages rather more than one to every couplet.

28 Halporn, J. W., Ostwald, M., Rosenmeyer, T. G., The Metres of Greek and Latin Poetry (London 1963), 107Google Scholar, note that the pentameter endings of the Ars Poetica are all dissyllabic; there are two exceptions only in the Fasti.

27 Platnauer, op. cit. (note 25), 40.

28 The other instances (M. iv, 20, F. iii, 125, T. V, 3.21) are all in hexameters.

29 The other two examples are Varro, LL iv, 18, Statius, Th. x, 497.

30 One indication of this is the use made in inscriptions of scraps of his verse; instances are listed in the index to Bücheler, F., Carmina Epigraphica (Anthologia Latina) (Leipzig 1897)Google Scholar. Vergil has almost seven columns, Ovid four, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius each about half a column.

31 Ellis, R., P. Ovidii Nasonis Ibis (Oxford 1881), lxi–lxiiiGoogle Scholar, suggests that the scholia on that work may go back to the fourth century; Martini, E., Einleitung zu Ovid (Brünn 1933), 39Google Scholar, suggests the possibility of an ancient commentary on the Metamorphoses.

32 Op. cit. (note 22), 123.