A NEW HADRIAN’S WALL BRONZE
CUP
Page revised 30 June 2004
In 2003 metal-detectorist Kevin Blackburn found a
small enamelled Roman bronze cup in Staffordshire. It was a very exciting find
because of the inscription that had been engraved around the top.
Back in 1725, one of Roman Britain’s most remarkable
finds was discovered in a well at Rudge Coppice, Froxfield, Wiltshire. It was
an enamelled bronze cup, 94mm wide, and decorated with what looks like a
crenellated wall. Around in rim in relief are the names of some of the western
forts on Hadrian’s Wall: MAIS (Bowness), ABALLAVA (Burgh-by- Sands), VXELOD[VN]VM (Stanwix), CAMBOGLAN[NI]S
(Castlesteads) and BANNA
(Birdoswald).
Left: the Rudge
Cup
A similar vessel was found in 1949 in northern France
at Amiens, although this one had a handle attached to the rim in the form of a
saucepan or Skillet. The Amiens vessel repeated the Hadrian’s Wall names, but
added AESICA
(Great Chesters), the next fort east.
Images copyright
The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent
(with thanks to
Deb Ford)
The Staffordshire cup is now the third such vessel.At
90mm diameter, it is slightly smaller than the Rudge cup, and it has decoration
in a more ‘Celtic’ style with inlaid roundels. The inscription engraved around
the rim repeats some of the Rudge inscription, but adds something new. It
reads:
RIGORE VALI
AELI DRACONIS MAIS COGGABATA VXELODVNVM CAMBOGLANNA
Here we have Bowness (MAIS) again,
followed by what must be the correct name for Drumburgh-by-Sands (COGGABATA) until now
known only as CONGAVATA
from the late Roman document, the Notitia Dignitatum. Next comes Stanwix
(VXELODVNVM)
again, then Castlesteads (CAMBOGLANNA),
before we get to the most tantalizing part.
RIGORE
seems to be the ablative form of the word RIGOR. This can
mean several things, but one of its less well-known meanings is ‘straight
line’, ‘course’ or ‘direction’. This was used by Roman surveyors and appears on
a number of inscriptions to indicate a line between places. So the meaning
could be ‘from the course’.
There is no such word as VALI, but in
antiquity Hadrian’s Wall was known as the Vallum, the Latin word for a
frontier which is today incorrectly applied to the ditch and mounds dug by the
Roman army just south of the Wall. So one of the most likely meanings is VAL[L]I, ‘of the
frontier’. The missing L is a small problem, but omitting letters is common on
Roman inscriptions, and transcribing an inscription from a written note is the
easiest way to miss out letters. The Rudge Cup has VN missing from the name VXELODVNVM, for example,
although the letters appear on the Staffordshire cup.
Finally we have the name AELI DRACONIS, which can be
translated as ‘[by the hand – or property] of Aelius Draco’. It was normal for
Roman manufacturers to give their names in the genitive (‘of’), and ‘by the
hand’ would be understood. The form is common, for example, on samian pottery.
The translation, therefore, could be:
‘Mais, Coggabata, Uxelodunum, Camboglanna, according
to the line of the frontier. [By the hand or The property] of Aelius
Draco’.
There is another way of reading this, which Roger
Tomlin has suggested as a possibility. The word AELI could belong
to VAL[L]I,
which would produce:
‘Mais, Coggabata, Uxelodunum, Camboglanna, according
to the line of the Aelian frontier. [By the hand or The property] of
Draco’.
This would mean then that Hadrian’s Wall in antiquity
was known as the Aelian Frontier. The bridge at Newcastle was certainly known
as Pons Aelius, or the Aelian Bridge. Aelius was Hadrian’s nomen – his
full name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus.
Notitia Dignitatum reflects this
concept of the Wall being a line or sequence, with its phrase per lineam
Valli, ‘along the line of the frontier’ when it lists the Wall forts. The
Ravenna Cosmography uses the phrase recto tramite, ‘from the route
straight across’.
Further study might suggest other ways of translating
the inscription, but this one fits the context well. I am very grateful to
Roger Tomlin at Oxford, and Mark Hassall of the Institute of Archaeology in
London who endorsed my suggestion about the meaning of the word RIGORE, finding
parallels for its use elsewhere in a context that confirmed what I thought it
meant here. Full publication of the text by Roger Tomlin will appear in Britannia
2004, published in December 2004. This article will contain a full discussion
of every word in the text.
Despite the various claims made in the press that
Draco was a veteran, or he was designer of the Wall and several other
completely speculative suggestions, it was quite amazing that little of the
press coverage actually referred to the content of the inscription.
So who
was Aelius Draco, or just Draco? The latter part of his name is Greek, but in
the cosmopolitan world of the Roman Empire, that need not mean much. He could,
for instance, have been descended from a Greek but born in Britain. Another
suggestion made by John Nandris that has been made is that he was a Dacian in
origin, though perhaps only descended from a Dacian based at Birdoswald fort on
the Wall, where the garrison was the First Aelian Cohort of Dacians, and who
had served as a draconarius, ‘dragon-standard bearer’. Aelius, as one of
Hadrian’s names, was commonplace from the 120s on. Whoever he was – the best we
can say is that he was a soldier, or one of the innumerable traders, artisans and
hangers-on who spent at least a part of his life on the Wall.
The Staffordshire cup gives us a little more insight
into the minds of people on the Wall, and how they must have regarded this
great military installation as a wonder worth remembering with something to
take home. How it came to be in Staffordshire though is another matter.
This article with some minor differences appeared in
the October 2003 edition of Current Archaeology.
Page revised 30 June 2004, after Roger Tomlin kindly sent me a draft of
his article for the 2004 edition of Britannia.
http://www.romanbritain.freeserve.co.uk/HADRIANS
WALL.HTM