SEVERAL Roman imperial portrait busts have been languishing unidentified or misidentified in southern England, new research suggests. Among them are Nero and the obscure Pertinax. A governor of Roman Britain of equal obscurity but gentler birth has also come to light.
A recent German publication by Richard de Kind suggests that two busts from Lullingstone Roman Villa in Kent are of Pertinax, who reigned briefly in AD192, and his father, Publius Helvius Successus. Pertinax is described in the Historia Augusta as “a stately old man with a long beard and hair brushed back, somewhat corpulent, but his bearing was regal”. He acceded after the murder of Commodus but was murdered on the Palatine hill in Rome.
Martin Henig suggests that “it is possible that Lullingstone served as a luxurious retreat for the governor”. The bust was damaged as a result of a damnatio memoriae by soldiers who resented his discipline. Dr Henig says: “We have here an important portrait, one of only a handful from Britain to portray an emperor.”
Miles Russell suggests that several portraits from England are unrecognised depictions of Nero. Writing in British Archaeology, Dr Russell claims that the bronze head found in the River Alde in Suffolk is not Claudius (reigned AD41-AD54) but his adopted successor. “That it is not Claudius is plain to see, possessing none of this emperor’s features; it does however have all the characteristics of the young Nero in the hairstyle, mouth, eyes and ears,” he says.
A representation of the teenage Nero has been found at Fishbourne, near Chichester, Dr Russell claims, but has been misidentified as a member of the local aristocracy. “The rounded cheeks and full, curving lips exactly match the features of the young Nero on a statue in the Louvre, as do the rounded lower face, slightly protruding ears, curling locks of hair and almond-shaped eyes: there can be no doubt that the face is Nero’s.” The head was smashed from the body and then damaged further, consonant with the damnatio memoriae visited on Nero’s images after his suicide.
A similarly damaged, but very large, head was found at Bosham in the 18th century and is now in Chichester Museum. Dr Russell says: “Nearly battered into oblivion, the piece is one of the most important discoveries yet made in the Roman province of Britain.Enough survives of the hairstyle, facial proportions and eyes to make an unambiguous identification of Nero: this was a colossal symbol of power.”
Dr Russell has made another suggestion about local Roman archaeology: in Current Archaeology he links two lost inscriptions that mention Lucullus, apparently the governor of Britain under Domitian (AD81-96). A text reported in 1658 notes this position, while a monument from Chichester gives the same names but also says that he is the son of Amminus.
Amminus is “a good Celtic name”, and was the Iron Age ruler who fled to Caligula in AD40 to escape his father Cunobelin, better known as Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. His son, who became Gaius Sallustius Lucullus, achieved the feat of being a native prince who was appointed Roman governor of his homeland.
Dr Russell’s most interesting idea is perhaps that the Fishbourne Palace was built not for Togidubnus or Togodumnus around the time of the Roman conquest of AD43, but for Lucullus around AD90, in the reign of Domitian. “Lucullus as governor of Britain owed his position to Domitian and his blood ties to the kings Cunobelin and Amminus: given his background and close associations with Chichester, his candidature as putative owner of Fishbourne Palace is very strong,” Dr Russell concludes.
British Archaeology 89: 42-45; Current Archaeology 204: 630-635
Excavations reveal the scale of Syon
ON THE eve of Agincourt, Shakespeare’s Henry V prays, listing how he has tried to expiate the murder of Richard II: “. . . I have built two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do.” One of these was the abbey of Sion in Twickenham; the latter foundation now lies under the great house at Syon Park, and excavations are revealing its scale.
Syon was a Bridgettine house, the only one in England of a Swedish order; a Scandinavian interest perhaps stemming from Henry V’s sister marrying King Erik X of Denmark, which also had notable churches at Pirita in Estonia and the mother house of Vadstena in Sweden. The English house attracted noblewomen as nuns and supporters, including the second Earl of Derby and Sir Richard Sutton, were buried there.
When it was suppressed in 1539, Syon was the wealthiest nunnery in England, and enough remained for Lady Jane Grey to be housed there, and for the nuns to return briefly under Mary I. Thereafter the site was converted to secular use and the great church vanished, until Richard Pailthorpe, the estate administrator, organised a geophysical survey and Time Team investigation in 2003. This discovered the church east of the present house: it was more than 120ft (36m) wide, larger than the Baltic Bridgettine churches.
The Vadstena abbey church is short for its width, with conventual buildings to the west: at Syon, Barney Sloane of English Heritage has suggested an enormously long church. This concept relies on the western part of the church underlying the south and west walls of Syon House, and the house may indeed incorporate remnants of the standing walls of the church, which would have been almost 400ft long, according to the preliminary report. One clue comes from a test pit dug in the courtyard, which revealed a floor of Netherlandish glazed tiles abutting a brick wall “that must have formed a structure, possibly a chapel, within the church”.
Equally interesting are the remains of the gardens developed by the Duke of Somerset in the 1540s. Formal gardens were laid out by the Earl of Northumberland in the reign of Charles I, but most of them were swept away by the Duke of Somerset early in the 18th century; evidence of levelling, dumps of rubble, and a central fountain have been found.
Lancelot “Capability” Brown was brought in a generation later to create an informal garden landscape of lawns and meadows as classical formalism gave way to early Romanticism.
