The Temple of Sulis-Minerva at Bath

Abstract

The Roman remains at Bath, dominated by the stately thermal establishment, have always been associated in geography and in archaeology with the goddess Sulis-Minerva. The famous pediment of her temple, found when the eighteenth-century Pump Room was built, has long been accounted one of the most remarkable manifestations of Romano-British art; its richly carved reliefs have always invited restoration; and they at once received it, somewhat sketchily from Englefield and most ingeniously from Samuel Lysons in 1802 (pl. XXIII). So convincing, indeed, was the main outline of Lyson's reconstruction that it held the field and remained the basis of all subsequent proposals, including that so carefully elaborated by the late A. J. Taylor. The discovery of the stones carried with it the site of the temple; for the blocks cannot have fallen far. It lay below the Pump Room, on the north side of the sacred pool whose copious hot springs were enclosed by the Romans in an irregular polygonal basin. The sanctity of the spring, which seems only later to have been roofed, is proved by the many coins and the leaden tablet inscribed with a curse which it contained, but, unlike many sacred pools, for example, that of Nemausus at Nîmes, it was not itself frequented by bathers. It could be viewed from the Baths through three great open windows on its south side; and these were of some architectural pretensions, the central member having a true arch, and the flanking pair (of which one survives (pl. XXIV, 2)) joggled flat arches, while the corridor within was furnished, as was no other part of the Baths, with fluted pilasters (pl. XXIV, 1).

An Imperial Image: The Bath Gorgon in Context

“…8 Indeed, it has not been, and I do not intend to do so here, other than to offer a reminder that the Tritons they depict in the corners are mostly conjectural, and the clenched hand visible to the lower left of the owl remains an arguable objection to the reconstruction of a helmet beneath. The owl may instead have been perched on the wrist of an unknown figure; this was the reconstruction suggested by Lysons in the 19 th century.…”

“…2). 6 At its centre is the head of a male Gorgon, mounted on a large circular shield and surrounded by two concentric oak wreathes. On either side, winged Victories standing on globes support the shield.…”

“…33 One Victorian scholar, George 42 possibly because they considered the pediment to date most likely to the third century. 43 In doing so, however, they neglected an entire series of parallels which are much closer both stylistically, geographically, and chronologically:…”

“…2. Reconstruction of the pediment by Richmond and Toynbee. ( Richmond and Toynbee 1955 , pl. XXVII; © Cambridge University Press ) …”

“… 3 The reconstruction of the elevation drawn by Lysons in 1813 is still regarded as generally correct; some elements of his reconstruction of the pediment were modified by Richmond and Toynbee 1955. …”