Level 3 - Life in Roman Sussex - Religion

Religion

Gods and Goddesses

The Roman administration was generally quite tolerant of provincial native religions, so long as they were not seen to be subversive to the state, and the population was prepared to honour the divine Imperial house. In the British Iron Age, there were many different spirits and gods, the majority of which were only found in local areas. This was essentially similar to the Roman system, where spirits and divinities were associated with practically every place and every action. There was undoubtedly therefore a large assemblage of deities worshipped in Roman Britain, from the fully classical to the wholly native, with most probably a complex amalgamation of the two traditions.

As visual images of the gods and goddesses were very common in the Mediterranean world - unlike in pre-conquest Britain - the majority of images of gods from Sussex were of classical deities. Mercury is among the most common represented, but others include Fortuna, Venus and Aesculipius. The famous Togidubnus inscription records the dedication of a temple to the Roman deities

Neptune and Minerva by a guild of smiths.

Mother goddesses - represented in the Chichester region by a statuette and an inscription - probably came from the Rhineland, where such dedications and imagery are common, although similar deities could well have been native to Britain. In some parts of Britain - notably urban and military centres - there is evidence for the existence of religious cults from the eastern empire, such as the Mithraic temple in London. In Sussex, there is only slight evidence for one of these eastern religions - Christianity - in the form of a lead font found near Worthing inscribed with a Christian symbol, the Chi-Rho (Greek for Christ). This remains the only evidence for Christianity in Roman Sussex.

A number of crudely carved heads have been found in Sussex, usually described as being native in character, and therefore representing indigenous deities. Unfortunately, most of them have no secure context and so their dating is uncertain, although a head from Eastbourne does appear to have some connection with the villa there.

It is probable that some deities were represented in symbolic rather than human form, and this may account for the comparatively high number of small boar figurines found in Sussex.