Silver skillet, with a highly decorated handle and some gilding. The bowl is deep, with slightly incurving walls forming a constriction in the line of the profile below the small everted rim.
The general theme of the decoration is the traditional one of acanthus scrolls and flowers, with some elements picked out by gilding. The central area of the handle carries the inscription MATR FAB / DVBIT in bold, neat lettering. The outlines of the letters are filled with a roughened surface to provide a key for the heavy gilding, perhaps more accurately termed ‘gold inlay’, which survives on the V, B and T of 'DVBIT’.
The skillet, part of the Backworth Hoard, bears a votive inscription dedicated to the Mother-Goddesses by a Fab(ius) Dubit(atus?).
The history of this hoard is obscure. We know that it was found around 1811, but not where it was found. The hoard was said to have included about 280 coins, but all but one of these, and probably other objects, were dispersed before The British Museum was able to acquire what was left of the treasure in 1850. The surviving coin is a denarius of Antoninus Pius (reigned AD 138-161) issued in AD 139.
The treasure was probably a votive deposit at a shrine of the Mother-goddesses near the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall.
A Roman knife handle from Syston, Lincolnshire. Only a few erotic knife handles have been found in Britain and this handle is of a new type. It depicts an erotic scene between two men and a woman, and a decapitated head.
A Roman burial was found at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire. A large stone coffin was found that contained the skeleton of a woman cradling a young child in her arms.
The environment inside the coffin had slowed down the process of decay helping to preserve the objects. The woman was wearing slippers with cork insoles and a fur lining which was a luxury item imported from the Mediterranean. The child was wearing calf skin shoes which are a unique find in Britain.
@verecunda kindly put together the following ask meme to celebrate Rosemary Sutcliff’s 100th birthday last year, and encourage more appreciation of her and her work. very belatedly, here are my answers!
Rules: answer the questions, tag anyone who you think might want to play along, and - if you like - add a question of your own.
1. Your favourite work by Sutcliff. if you’d asked me when I were younger, it would have been Warrior Scarlet, but as I’ve not read it in a long time, I’m going to say The Eagle of the Ninth. I love it because of the nuance and variety in its takes on cross-cultural encounter and interchange, which we see through the minor characters like Placidus and Uncle Aquila as much as the major ones. But mostly I love it because Marcus, Cottia and Esca are lost, lonely individuals, who’ve been jolted out of the lives they expected to have, and had the dreams and hopes and power and status they always banked on taken away from them. And yet they forge a connection, across everything that should separate them, and make a new home and a new life, together.
2. Your favourite bearer of the dolphin ring. oh, Alexios, for sure—I love his sensitivity and perception and dry humour and deep sincerity.
3. A supporting or background character you love. Rahere in The Witch’s Brat; the philosophical, melancholy jester to the king, whose sharp mind and wry scepticism conceal a tender heart. (love the part where the church of St Bartholomew the Great is consecrated, and Rahere’s ‘strange and haunted face breaks open into joy’.) Lovel plainly has a massive crush on him, and I do not blame him in the least.
what I especially enjoy about their interactions is that it gives both of them the opportunity to be truly listened to and seen, and for both of them this is something precious and rare.
I find it so surreal to think that he was a real person, and that the church he founded in London can still be visited. I’ve been having a lot of Feelings about Christianity recently, and am not sure to what extent they’re genuinely a calling and to what extent they’re the product of spending the last month reading Tom Holland’s book Dominion. it’s the fanning of a flame rather than lighting, but all the same I’m taking it slow and remain the hovering, longing agnostic I ever was.
nonetheless, I tuned in to one of their online services one Sunday, and their vicar is such a lovely person—warm, jovial, unassuming, and with a quietly mischievous sense of humour. His homily started off with the story about Edward de Vere farting in front of Elizabeth I, went on through his chair collapsing during a papal audience, to Peter being awkward when Jesus reveals his divinity to him, and finished with how Lent is preparation for our own encounter with a living God, one who, thankfully, not only forgives but forgets our embarrassing behaviour. The rest of it was very high and serious - with some absolutely beautiful sacred music - so I wasn’t expecting something that humble. (also, I really like that their website makes a point of saying they’re an inclusive church, open to people of all genders, sexualities etc.)
4. Your favourite animal companion. of course Sutcliff is famous for her love of dogs, but for me, I think it’s the constant presence of birds in her descriptions of landscape—the curlews, the swallows, the geese, the bitterns, the plover. It adds to the sense of somewhere alive and keenly observed.
5. Is there any setting you find especially memorable? given how many times I read Sun Horse Moon Horse as a child, it’s got to be the Berkshire Downs and the White Horse of Uffington. reading Sutcliff has really made me aware of how the ancient Britons sacralised and transformed the world around them, and how the traces of that are still present today, whether in stone circles or chalk glyphs or mounds or hillforts.
6. Wild geese flighting and striped native rugs: is there a classic Sutcliff motif that never fails to warm your heart when it appears? I’d have to agree with @ciceros-ghost on the use of “it is in my heart/mind that”; I love how she flexes English to give it a more Celtic cadence, plus it’s just a gorgeous phrase.
also, I’m not sure if you’d call this a motif as such, but I really like what I think of as the ‘hockey stick’ structure common to so many of her books; in the sense that if you could graph out the protagonist’s emotional state over time, that’s how it would look. Early on the main character experiences some sort of loss or disappointment, and the rest of the book is about healing from it and building a new life and identity. I like it so much because of its emphasis on how life, despite everything, goes on; how hope and happiness are always possible, even when (it feels as if) you’ve lost everything.
7. The natural world is a vivid presence in all her work. Is there any particular nature description that sticks in your mind? none that I could quote you, I’m afraid, but I’m very glad of them all. the British Isles are a beautiful place, and it means a lot to me to see my ordinary, everyday home described with such care and reverence and dignity and grandeur.
8. Biggest tearjerker. (Happy or sad tears!) THE ENDING OF THE LANTERN BEARERS. Throughout the book we see how deeply traumatised Aquila has been by everything that he’s gone through; how he wants to reach out to those around him but won’t risk that sort of pain again. and so for him to reach a place where he loves and is loved……I had to bite down really hard not to start sobbing.
Song for a Dark Queen is also incredibly sad; it hurt how much the Romans neither understood nor cared what they were doing, how little they got or wanted to get the Iceni. A whole culture was completely trodden upon. (though on a lighter note, Julius Agricola’s letters home to his mother were precious.)
9. How did you first discover Sutcliff? the library at my primary school had some of her books, and while I can’t now be certain of this, I think the first one I ever picked up was Sun Horse Moon Horse. As a child I loved epics and fairytales and myths, and I loved ancient history. And I think I latched on to Sutcliff’s work because it felt like those; it had the same high, clear, noble, otherworldly lineaments. (though funnily enough as an adult I prefer her more grounded works, the ones that invest more time in relationship and character development. strange how your tastes and expectations change as you get older!)
10. What is it about her work that appeals to you the most? beyond the mythic tone and beautifully observed depictions of the ancient and medieval world that I loved as a child, I’ve also come to appreciate its humility and gentleness. so many of Sutcliff’s characters are in some way other, and her approach is always one of kindness, broadmindedness and generosity; one that celebrates and welcomes all that they are. also god the devotion. that simple, earnest pledging of your heart and service to another just affects me so much.
11. A book that deserves more love. The Armourer’s House is an underappreciated gem, with a folk and fairy magic gleaming through its pages. if you like Robin McKinley’s quietly wondrous cottagecore, it’s very similar in vibe to that.
12. A book you haven’t read yet, but want to. so many! in particular, I feel like I need to read The Silver Branch, The Shining Company, The Mark of the Horse Lord and Dawn Wind, just because they seem to be among the better-known and more discussed books in the fandom.
13. Which book(s) would you love to get a film or TV adaptation? Frontier Wolf, without question. I’d love to see Alexios, Hilarion, Cunorix and Connla, and all the little details of their world, brought to life.
14. Is there any historical period, incident, or figure you wish she’d written about? reluctantly accepting that Sutcliff just Would Not write about the medieval era beyond the early Normans, I’d have liked to see her try her hand at the Hellenistic period! I think there’s a lot there which would suit her usual themes, whether it’s the Hellenisation of Asia post-Alexander’s conquests and the Wars of the Successors, or early Republican Romans encountering the wider, more sophisticated, classical world.
15. Rec a Sutcliff-themed fanwork (fic, art, vid, etc.) to share with fellow fans. all of @motetus’s drawings are gorgeous, and feel so much like the descriptions from the books.
And lastly, just out of interest….how far is it from Venta to the mountains? heeee, this is the code/password from The Lantern Bearers! I believe the answer from the book is something like 200 miles - and googling distances from Winchester to Wales, that does seem about right.
Grange Farm in Kent is an interesting archaeological site near Watling Street, one of the main roads of Roman Britain. First inhabited by a farming community in the Late Iron Age (around 100BC), the property became a center for silver extraction “on an industrial scale” in the 4th century CE, and then the site of a two-storey stone mausoleum in which was found the lead-lined coffin of an elite woman. A water mill was constructed at some later point, and then the land passed into the possession of Bishop Odo of Bayeaux. Material evidence suggests the ruins of the mausoleum became a hallowed place for Anglo-Saxon immigrants and evocatively, upon eventual human abandonment, the abode of tawny owls. A manor was built on the site in the Middle Ages, of which some elements still stand.
