‘Equus October’: the October horse…

This was a busy week in ancient Roman world – there were three religious festivals in a row, ie Meditrinalia on the 11th October, Augustalia on the 12th October, and Fontinalia on the 13th. Tomorrow, the 15th – the Ides of the month – was also a special day, with a Feriae (festival) for the god Jupiter (god of the sky, light, thunder, and king of the gods) and the October horse sacrifice to Mars (the god of war). Augustalia was celebrated during the lifetime of the Roman emperor Augustus with a sacrifice to Fortuna Redux and with games or ludi (the Ludi Augustales or Augustan games) in the Circus Maximus, the great Roman circus at Rome. (Interestingly, Augustus added the ancient Egyptian obelisk and the pulvinar to the Circus Maximus.)

The October horse sacrifice took place in the Campus Martius in Rome at the end of the agricultural and military campaigning season, during a horse-racing festival. The festival included biga (two-horse chariot) races which were held in the Campus Martius. The lead horse of the winning chariot would then be speared and its head and tail cut off and used in rituals, when the head would be displayed in a local neighbourhood and the tail would be used to drip blood on a sacred hearth in the Regia at Rome. This is the only horse sacrifice in Roman religion and, apparently, the rites suggest initiation and rebirth. In Roman religion, racing-chariots and horses could symbolise the body and the spirit, and horses were associated with death and the underworld.

The Trust has not retrieved a large quantity of horse remains from Roman Colchester, and none of these suggest a sacrificial function. However, there is evidence of horse sacrifice at the site of the Roman-period temple at Witham in Essex*. It is suggested that this is associated with the Celtic horse goddess Epona, or with a local cult associated with the native Trinovantes tribe. A Roman ritual group of finds has also been excavated at Ardleigh near Colchester, by the Colchester Archaeological Group: this included parts of the skull of a young horse (CAG Bulletin no 8, 1965). A complete Roman-period horse skeleton was excavated at Cressing Temple near Witham during an Essex County Council FAU field school project in 2003 (from the Trust’s magazine The Colchester Archaeologist, no 17, 2004).

The Essex County Council Field Archaeology Unit retrieved 17,303 animal bones during their excavations on the remarkable site at Witham in 1978-83, and these represent several species, including a large number of horse bones, as well as 557 human bones which represent four burials and isolated fragments. Horse remains are rare on Roman sites in Britain, but the Witham site produced evidence of 68 horses, including a number of skull remains. The site at Witham was complex and had been in use throughout the Iron Age and the Roman period, until the 5th century. The evidence included a domestic Iron Age settlement, associated with religious use of part of the site. There was considerable evidence of Roman religious activity here, such as three hollows, one of which produced votive objects. This hollow was associated with a ditched sub-rectangular area, interpreted as a 4th-century temple. Evidence of a large square structure is interpreted as an older, Romano-Celtic temple dated to the 3rd century AD. A large pond with a water-supply was also constructed then, possibly with some timber columns. Votive offerings in the form of coins and jewellery were retrieved and suggest the the site included a pagan shrine in the late 4th and early 5th century (EAA 88 – East Anglian Archaeology report, 88 (EAA 88): Excavations of an Iron Age settlement and Roman religious complex at Ivy Chimneys, Witham, Essex 1978-83, by Robin Turner, 1999 – read the report online via http://eaareports.org.uk/publication/report88/ ).

Horses and other animals seem to have been slaughtered and butchered here, with some evidence of domestic and industrial processing, but also suggesting religious feasting and sacrifice. Most of the horse remains were recorded randomly across the site, but one set of horse remains was retrieved from the pond, and one set was found with a neonatal human burial in a ditch.

Rosemary-Margaret Luff wrote the report on the animal bones for the Witham site. Interestingly, she refers to the October horse sacrifice. She also writes that Epona was often worshipped at temples in association with the cult of Jupiter-Giant, and there is evidence of a Jupiter-Giant column at Witham. Ms Luff also notes that Epona could be associated with river goddesses and sacred springs and that, in the south-east of England, votive deposits of horse skulls and bones have been retrieved from pits and wells: ‘… A 3rd-century well at Chelmsford contained five horse skulls, foetal and young lambs, human bone, raven , cockerel, and goose bones, which suggest a possible “votive deposit” (Luff 1982, 176) …’ (EAA 88). A Roman pit excavated in Chelmsford in 1987 produced an almost-complete horse skeleton.

A fragmentary stone sculpture from Colchester includes a figure which has been identified as Epona, the Celtic goddess of horses, donkeys, rivers and springs, and fertility. The Trust has excavated evidence of a number of horses (57 identifiable bone elements) on two of our archaeological sites adjacent to the site of the Roman circus in Colchester, in 2004-5, but we do not think that these represent horse sacrifice.

The image shows the fragmentary sculpture of Epona from Colchester and the plan of a group of horse bones on the Witham site, including skull, from ditch F3323 (from EAA 88). [Image to follow.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* ‘… The site lies within a substantial Late Iron Age enclosed settlement that was bisected by the London–Colchester Roman road shortly after the [Roman] conquest. Evidence for buildings was minimal, indicating post-built wooden structures, some of them large in size. The excavator suggests that one of these was a wooden Romano-Celtic temple, in Phase 4, late 3rd century A.D. 73. The main deposits of votive material came from an artificially dug ‘pond’ and associated shallow pits and depressions. There was definite evidence for ritual deposition from the 2nd century A.D., and there may have been a Christian element in Phase 6, mid 4th century A.D.. Deposition of votive material resumed in late 4th to early 5th century, and most of the animal bones derived from this phase. The animal bone assemblage does not differ much from non-temple sites, except for the fact that bones are present in high numbers. As at Folly Lane [St Albans], the bones perhaps represent meals left by worshippers or visitors to the sacred areas. Of interest as possible sacrificial deposits, however, are the horse bones. These are present in relatively high percentages, and show evidence of butchery in the Late Iron Age and in the later Roman period. There were also deposits of horse crania and other articulated skeletal elements in ditches of the later Roman period, some of them in association with dog teeth. The presence of the horse bones is highlighted in the interpretation of the site as a manifestation of a local Trinovantian cult, rather than evidence for a more widespread cult such as Epona …’ (Animal remains from temples in Roman Britain, Anthony C King, 2005).

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