Part 8

A FEW broken fragments only remain to us, but they are sufficient to suggest to our imaginations the sculptures of Londinium. The finest work of sculpture found in London is the magnificent head from a bronze statue of the Emperor Hadrian, which was taken from the river near London Bridge in 1834. The head, with the neck, is 16½ in. high. It is really a masterly work of art, of Hellenistic character, and may, I think, be Alexandrian. The treatment of the head and beard is surprisingly like that of the marble Hadrian from Cyrene in the British Museum. Here we have the close-clipped beard and moustache; also the double row of curly locks of hair over the forehead from ear to ear, and the hair close cut behind, an arrangement suitable for the support of a wreath. The beard is again similar on a bronze head of a man found at Cyrene, in the British Museum. The projecting ears of the head of Hadrian are like the ears of the bronze head of Augustus in the British Museum, found in Egypt. That the bronze head of Hadrian represents a statue and an erect figure is shown by the facts that one shoulder is higher than the other and the axis of the head and neck is bent. The figure must, I think, have had the left arm uplifted. The statue must have been a splendid object in some public place—possibly the square of the Forum, or on the bridge. In a cast, when seen close by, it looks lumpy and even dull, but the original bronze as set up in the Museum is not only powerful but vivid; notice the sharp eyebrows, the way the nose is set into the brow, the line on the forehead, and the strong expressive mouth (Fig. 72, from Roach Smith). There is also in the British Museum a bronze hand, found in Thames Street, which seems similar to the head in scale and excellence of workmanship; moreover, faults in the casting have been repaired in a similar way on the neck and the wrist. Roach Smith seems to have thought that the head and the hand did not belong to the same statue. Speaking of the head he said: “It belonged to a colossal statue, two of which we may probably reckon among the public embellishments of London, for excavations in Thames Street, near the Tower, brought to light a colossal bronze hand 13 in. in length, which has been broken from a statue of about the same magnitude, and, apparently, judging from the attitude, from a statue of Hadrian also. The posture is similar to that of the marble statue in the British Museum.” Dr. Haverfield says of the head: “It appears to have belonged to a colossal statue of the emperor; the forehead is too short; the ears set out too obliquely; and the back of the head projects too strongly; the beard, too, is more closely cut than Hadrian usually wore it.” In another place he speaks of it as “a life-size head of the emperor Hadrian; whether it belonged to a colossal statue of the emperor I do not know, nor does it much matter”(!). In one aspect, Dr. Haverfield was a champion of things Roman in Britain; in another, he, as will be seen in regard to the mosaics, generally spoke slightingly of their quality.

I may now sum up my conclusions. The head belonged to a standing statue. The hand, found separately, may have belonged to the same statue; it probably drooped and held a roll. The head has the characteristics of Hellenistic art. The expression is alert and eagle-like; the close-cropped beard already appears on the head of Mausolus in the British Museum, and seems to have been maintained as an Alexandrian tradition. The statue was doubtless imported and may well have been brought from Alexandria, a chief centre of bronze casting. Notice that repairs are executed in an exactly similar way on the head of “Aphrodite,” brought from Armenia and probably an Alexandrian work, _c._ 200 B.C. A little silver image of Harpocrates, also found in the Thames, is, I think, certainly an Alexandrian work. The bronze statue would have been set up as a memorial of the Emperor’s visit to Britain in 121. A “big brass” was struck in honour of the same event, inscribed _Adventus Augusti Britanniæ_, and the profile portrait on the coin is very like our head. It has the clipped beard and bears a laurel wreath. Hadrian was the first of the emperors to wear a beard, and we may take our bronze as evidence that he began with the clipped fashion. Not much attention has been given to this head as an early portrait of the emperor, but it is important from that point of view. Compare it with a small bronze bust of a later time found at Winchester and also in the British Museum.

Other remnants of large bronze statues have been found in London. Two fragments at the Guildhall are thus described: “(19) Arm of a bronze statue broken off below the elbow, 19 in. long; (21) Left hand of a statue, bronze, of heroic size, with traces of gilding, 9½ in. long. Found in a well to the east of Seething Lane.” From a notice in _The Builder_ (May 3, 1884), it appears that the latter was found with coins of Nero and Vespasian during the construction of the Metropolitan Railway. An article in the _Journal of the Archæological Association_ (vol. xxiv.) discusses other fragments of bronze statues. There must be evidence for the existence of four or five large bronze statues in Londinium. A bronze leg of a horse at the Society of Antiquaries, found in Lincoln, shows that equestrian figures—probably of emperors—were also known in Britain (cf. the Marcus Aurelius in Rome).

_Other Portraits._—In the Guildhall is a tomb with a relief of a soldier, larger and in higher relief than usual, which was found in the Camomile Street bastion, and probably occupied a place in the cemetery by Bishopsgate. This figure of a _signifer_ is a little battered, and this accentuates a certain grimness of expression, but it is really a masterly work of unflattered portraiture. There cannot be many existing presentments of a Roman man more real; this has the face of a functionary, and the details of the costume are made out with careful accuracy. The mantle, or cape, partly stitched together in front, was like a chasuble. It was the _pænula_ on which there is an excursus at the end of Becker’s _Gallus_. The sword had one of the ivory or bone hilts of which there is an example in the British Museum—every detail was evidently carefully studied from fact. Soldiers on the Trajan Column bear similar swords. It is probably an early second-century work. (The Colchester centurion (_c._ 100) has a similar sword-hilt.[1]) When we learn to value and make due use of our antiquities a copy of this relief should be set up to stand for the fact of Roman rule in Londinium. I gave a restoration of the whole slab in the _Architectural Review_, 1913; it has been wrongly restored in Price’s volume on the Camomile Street bastion.

Footnote 1:

Cf. Daremberg and Saglio, _Gladius_.

The relief of the Colchester centurion, Favonius Facilis, is really a fine work, one of the most perfect representations of a centurion which exist (cf. Daremberg and Saglio). The niche in which the figure stood had a shell represented on its rounded top; only the hinge-end of the bivalve appears at the apex, and the rest may have been indicated by painting.

At Oxford there is a soldier’s memorial stone with a sculptured relief of a similar kind to the centurion of Colchester and the _signifer_ just described. It was found at Ludgate Hill when Wren rebuilt St. Martin’s Church (Fig. 73). According to _V.C.H._ the soldier carries a dagger in his right hand. This object is so long that Pennant called it “a sword of vast length like the claymore.” In fact, it is a rod held exactly as the Colchester centurion holds his stick, and I suppose it was a rod of office of some kind. The scroll the man carries in his left hand also suggests that he was more than a “private”; so also does the monument itself, which must have been costly. Roach Smith properly speaks of “stick and roll.” There is a good drawing of this monument in the Archer collection at the British Museum. I give here a sketch made from the original at Oxford. The figure is injured, but it was skilfully cut and gracefully posed. I should date it in the first half of the second century. At the Guildhall is a head larger than life-size found in the Camomile Street bastion, which, although battered, shows character (Fig. 74). The discovery of a marble bust of a girl, near Walbrook, was recorded in _The Builder_ of March 12, 1887.

_Roman Gods and Impersonations._—It is hardly brought out in the history books that the inhabitants of Britain possessed a great classical inheritance. I would say possess, but we do not seem to have determined whether we are British or only English. For a thousand years before the Teutonic invasions of the fifth century A.D. Britain had been in touch with Greek and Roman cultures, and for centuries before that again some overflow from Mediterranean lands had reached this island, and the Celts themselves were a great European race. During five centuries from 100 B.C. to A.D. 400 Britain became fully Romanised. After that time it was probably only some small balance of forces which gave us a Teutonic language, while France under somewhat similar circumstances retained a Latin tongue. Greek gods and, doubtless, Greek stories were known here long before the Roman occupation, as the British coins (the most beautiful money ever coined in these islands) show. Already when Ptolemy wrote his geography, Hartland Point, in Devonshire, was the promontory of Herakles, and this is evidence which, together with figures of Hercules on the British coins, strongly suggests that some Hercules story became localised in Britain. Possibly, as the seas beyond the Gibraltar Straits became better known, the “Pillars of Hercules” were shifted to the headland facing the Atlantic. Hercules rescuing Hesione appears as a subject on Castor pottery. “This, and the corresponding scene of Perseus and Andromeda, were popular in Britain and Gaul,” says Dr. Haverfield, and adds: “Whether the scenes conveyed any symbolic meaning in these lands I should greatly doubt.” I incline the other way. It is to be remarked that several altars dedicated to Hercules have been found in Britain: one at Corbridge is inscribed in Greek to the Syrian Hercules—that is, the same who had the famous temple at Gades.

During the Roman rule, the Olympian gods and minor classical genii were, of course, fully adopted, and the monuments show interesting transitions of thought. Jove became a single supreme deity, while the most of the other chief gods were associated with the planets and the days of the week—1 Sol, 2 Luna, 3 Mars, 4 Mercury, 5 Jupiter, 6 Venus, 7 Saturn. This stage of thought is represented by the Jove and Giant Pillars before described.

On the fragment from Chesterford at the British Museum we have Mercury with his wand, Jupiter with bearded face, and Venus with a mirror. These figures can be completed by comparison with others. There is a relief of Mercury at Gloucester. Another, illustrated by Espèrandieu, is of the same sort; he seems always to have carried a pouch in his right hand (Fig. 75). At the Goldsmiths’ Hall is a little altar having a relief of Diana on the front, a group of sacrificial utensils on the back, and simple reliefs of two trees on the returns. The figure is charming, graceful and well proportioned. The pose and setting in the panel are very similar to the soldier relief at Colchester, and I should date it about the same time, A.D. 100-150. The figure is very like a small bronze found near St. Paul’s, of which Allen gave an illustration; that also held a bow, and with the lifted right hand took an arrow from the quiver behind her shoulder. The objects carved on the back of the altar are a table of offerings (compare the leg of a piece of furniture in Leicester Museum), a jug and probably a dipper (Fig. 76). Archer, who published etchings of the reliefs, thought he saw a hare here, but this was a misreading of the obscure forms. This altar must have belonged to some temple or shrine. As Dr. Haverfield says of a somewhat similar relief of Diana found near Bath: “We need not doubt that passers-by worshipped Diana of the Romans.”

At the Guildhall is the upper part of a terra-cotta image of Ceres, and fragments of a Hercules, perhaps from a tomb, were found at Ludgate in 1806. There are many small bronze figures in our museums—altogether quite a Pantheon could be made up of images found in Britain, and these, I feel, belong to us in a special way.

In the form of impersonations of the days, the seven gods might still be available in a modern art language if we had sufficient sense to construct such an Esperanto.[2]

Footnote 2:

I may say here that I have made some collections for a sort of Art-language Dictionary, attempting to register such forms and symbols as might be available for modern use, but I suppose nothing will come of it.

The Roman impersonations of places and ideas are nearer to us than the gods, and they indeed belong to universal poetry. Chief of these is _Britannia_, the “Sacred Britain” of the inscriptions. This impersonation was “revived” (we may truly say so in this case, for it had life and reality in it) for our coins in the seventeenth century. It is astonishing evidence of the paralysis of modern architectural thought how little use has been made of this noble imagination which ultimately derives from the gold and ivory Athene of Phidias, and yet is our very own. A seated variant of the standing Athene was made to represent the goddess Rome, and this in turn was the source of our _Britannia_. Next in importance were the impersonations of cities, and every city and station had a representative figure which stood for its spirit, its genius, itself. Our French friends, in their images of the City of Paris or of Strasbourg, still make use of the idea, but we have ceased to know that a city is more than a congested area where landlords hire out what they call houses. I wonder if London were given an image whether it might not acquire a new sense of soul.

In the London Museum is a pretty and well-sculptured figure which is, I think, a city impersonation and may be _Londinium_. It is one of two sculptures in marble which seem to have been found about 1887, together with a Mithraic relief, on the bank of the Walbrook. It was at first identified as Fortune, but Dr. Haverfield objected that Fortune would have been a female figure, and he suggested “_Bonus Eventus_, or a genius”; at the London Museum it is entitled _Bonus Eventus_. It would be hardly possible to bring forward any nearly similar figure with such a designation; on the other hand, a genius of Rome having a striking resemblance to our figure is one of the commonest types of the later coinage. Our figure, a graceful youth, holds a great cornucopia against his left shoulder and pours with his right hand a libation on an altar from a patera; a serpent rising from the altar winds around his wrist; by his left leg is the prow of a ship. He has two wreaths or collars around his neck and is partially draped; his mantle seems to have fallen from his head like a veil, and this suggests that he wore a mural crown or a modius. Now the genius of the Roman people on the coins was represented with a modius on his head, a horn of abundance in his left hand, and a patera from which he pours, in his right. Such a figure occurs on several coins which bear the Mint mark of London and the legend _Genio Populi Romani_. It is quite possible that our statue may be the genius of Londinium itself. It is known that our British Roman towns had impersonations wearing mural crowns—a fragment of such a figure has been found at Silchester. Our figure is clearly of the nature of Fortune, and the impersonations of towns were their Fortunes. The ship and the horn of plenty, piled up with fruits, corn and articles of commerce, are especially appropriate for a busy port. I suggest that this figure might, and should be, adopted as the impersonation and image of the City of London.

I had already written this when I found a figure illustrated in Bruce’s book on the Roman Wall, which is a close parallel to our figure. It was found at Netherby, and is described thus: “The best piece of sculpture belonging to this station represents the Genius of the Castrum wearing the mural crown and engaged in the grateful task of pouring an offering to the superior powers” (Fig. 77). The resemblance of this figure to that in the London Museum proves, I think, that that is the genius of a place, as does also the serpent which rises from the altar. An altar “To the Genius Loci,” found at Chester, represented the genius holding a cornucopia. Compare two altars figured by Lysons (_Reliq._, pl. lviii.) of similar figures apparently male, each with patera, altar, snake and cornucopia. Fig. 78 is one of those in the British Museum.)

Wren, in an early design for the Monument, proposed that it should be surmounted by a civic impersonation.

In Roman days every place and almost every field had its _genius loci_—an idea which we still timidly preserve as a “figure of speech.” Many British inscriptions and sculptures relate to Silvanus, Rivers and Fountains; to the Deities of the Fields of Britain (think of that now!), to Nymphs of the Springs (think again of ours choked with tins and old shoes), and to the God of Ways and Paths (perhaps such an image would do some good at Liverpool Street and King’s Cross).

The other marble sculpture found with the Genius is the torso of a river god of a well-known type—and very well carved. The figure reclined supported by his left arm; the right hand carried a long water reed which rested against his right shoulder (Fig. 79). The head, with long curling hair and beard, is in a tradition which derives from the Zeus of Phidias, and the body had its prototype in the reclining figures of the Parthenon pediments. Some reliefs of similar river gods occupy the spandrels of the Arch of Constantine. Bruce illustrated a very similar figure which represented the North Tyne (Fig. 80). We have every right to assume that the torso in the London Museum may be called the Thames. There is some reason, from the conditions of discovery, to think that this figure and the Genius before described occupied places in a Mithraic cell by the Walbrook. That a river impersonation and a genius of locality should be so found together strengthens the evidence that they represented London and Father Thames. Modern figures of the Thames and other rivers existed in seventeenth-century London.

_Mithras, etc._—At the London Museum is a Mithraic relief, rough and small, but a valuable document. In the centre is Mithras and the bull, surrounded by the circle of the Zodiac. “Outside in one upper corner the Sun drives up his four-horse chariot, and in the other the Moon is driving her car downwards. Beneath are two winged heads, probably symbolising the Winds” (Haverfield). These heads are very well carved and quite pretty; so are the Zodiac signs. This is one of many cases of the similarity of monuments in London and at Trèves. On the celebrated Igel monument is found another Zodiac, the signs of which (so far as they exist) are practically identical with those on our stone. In the spandrels are “heads of wind-gods, emblematic of the four cardinal points.” These heads are winged like those on the London stone, and the comparison allows us to be sure of the interpretation of the latter: the rising Sun is East, the setting Moon is West, the bearded head is North, and the youthful one South.

A small figure found in Bevis Marks, and now in the British Museum, is usually identified as Atys. I have some doubt whether it was not rather Silvanus; but it may be a grave monument, and for such a purpose a figure of Atys would be appropriate. A small figure of Hercules at the Guildhall was also probably, as before said, a tomb sculpture.

In the London Museum is another small sculpture, this time in relief, of a figure seemingly in countryman’s costume, standing in a roughly-formed niche or rock recess. By his side is some implement like a yoke, but I cannot suggest any explanation. It has “character,” and I should like to know what it means. It was found in Drury Lane.

Bagford, in his letter to Hearne (1714), mentions a Janus head dug up at St. Thomas Watering on the Dover Road by Bermondsey, also a glass urn at Peckham, and several other Roman things at Blackheath. The Janus head was about a foot and a half high, and seemed to have been fixed to a square column or terminus. It was illustrated by Horsley. One of the two faces was Jupiter Ammon with ram’s horns, the other was female.

I cannot here do more than mention the dozens of small bronzes, some of high excellence, which have been found in London; doubtless most or all of these were imported. Mr. Chaffers saw a beautiful bronze of an archer with inlaid eyes of silver taken out of the mud in Queen Street, Cheapside, in 1842. A pretty bronze relief of Hope was found in Thames Street in 1840 (_V.C.H._). I must just refer to a delightful little bronze Genius, found at Brandon, and now in the British Museum, which holds a double horn of plenty. This, again, is probably a locality genius. Many of the small clay lamps found in London have pretty reliefs on them, such as a figure of Victory, a head of Luna (Fig. 81), a bird, or an animal. Altogether we have quite a large gallery of classical imagery of our own.

_Ornament._—Carved decorations were for the most part rude and rapidly cut, but they show some fresh thought and are very different from the defunct details which now pass for “classic.” At the Guildhall is part of a frieze of small scale (Fig. 62) which has running animals alternating with trees. This suggestion of the forest was a popular motive of the time, and is found frequently on our native-made Castor pottery. Haverfield suggested that it might be a Celtic motive, but it is found on Samian pottery, and Espèrandieu illustrates a similar frieze of higher quality found at Mainz. All the Roman architectural carvings found in Britain, it may again be said, very closely resemble works found in Gaul, and especially at Trèves.