dies natalis of Rome: today, 21st April

Today (21st April) is the dies natalis of Rome in the ancient Roman calendar, that is, the day of the festival to celebrate the founding of Rome. It is also Parilia, the Roman festival of the Pales, the god and goddess of shepherds and livestock.

The date which the Roman republic established as the year in which Rome was founded is 753 BC. The goddess Roma was the divine personification of the city, but the legend associated with the founding of Rome is based on Romulus and Remus, twin brothers who were the sons of the god Mars and were, therefore, demigods; the twins were saved in infancy by the River Tiber, suckled by a wolf and then raised by a shepherd. When adult, Romulus killed Remus in a dispute over where to establish their new city, then founded Rome and named it after himself – Roma. The legend encapsulates Rome’s identity and was regarded as being part of the history of Rome.

Interestingly, only last week it was reported that new archaeological evidence from Rome could date the city to a century before the accepted date, ie to between the 9th century and the beginning of the 8th century BC. The Roman empire invaded Britain in AD 43 and the 20th Legion of the Roman army established a fort on the site of Colchester town centre in circa AD 44. The colony – the Roman town at Colchester – was founded in circa AD 49. Colchester is, of course, the oldest recorded town in Britain.

A gold finger-ring with a gem intaglio showing the goddess Roma, from Colchester, is now in the British Museum. It is one of only nine intaglio gems showing Roma which have, so far, been found in Britain. The nine Roma gems have been found at York, Silchester, Cirencester, Sidbury, the fort at Newstead, the fortress at Caerleon, London, Wroxeter and Colchester. The York example shows a martial and victorious Roma, seated, leaning on a shield, and wearing a crested helmet, with a breast-plate standing to one side of her and a sword on the other side; she is holding a ‘victory’ in her right hand. This is, apparently, an early, pre-Hadrianic representation of Roma and is similar to the example from Silchester. Two of the other gems, from Wroxeter and Colchester, show a later representation of Roma. The York gem was reported on in The Archaeology of York: the small finds (volume 17, 1976)  and the intagli catalogue entry concludes: ‘… All three gems [previously] found in Britain depicting Roma came from highly Romanized sites and the York gem serves to confirm the surmise that the personification of Rome as a goddess was a conception which appealed to the higher echelons of society, amongst whom we must include both legionaries and curiales …’ (Dr Martin Henig). (The Sidbury gem was found in 1975-6, the Caerleon gem in 1981, the Cirencester gem in 1982, the London gem in 1983, and the Newstead gem in 1984.)

For an item on the new evidence for the dating of Rome, see www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/13/archaelogists-find-rome-century-older-than-thought

The image is of Colchester’s Roma intaglio, from the Trust’s book City of Victory – the story of Colchester, Britain’s first Roman town. This Roma is also seated, martial and victorious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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