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The Sidmouth Bronze: Legionary Standard or Tripod?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

M. V. Taylor
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Extract

The well-known bronze figure of a centaur and rider (pl. viii) now in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum at Exeter was found on the beach at the foot of the cliffs (near two geological faults) about 200 yards east of the little river Sid by some fishermen in 1840.

The only other recorded discoveries of Roman objects at Sidmouth consist of a few coins on the sea beach—a ‘first brass’ of Vespasian, a Commodus of A.D. 183, and a small brass of Constantine I (as well as a Bactrian copper)—and others in Sidmouth or the neighbourhood, while pottery of the first, and perhaps second, century A.D., ultimately from the Early Iron Age hill-fort at High Peak, two miles south-west of Sidmouth, has also been noted. The nearest site of any Roman structure is at Seaton, some nine or ten miles to the northeast, where traces of a Roman house have been observed. Until something more substantial has been discovered we can only conclude that the little harbour at the mouth of the river Sid in the Roman period was visited by a few travellers, but not extensively inhabited. It may even be that the bronze object, though of Roman date, was brought by a post-Roman traveller, or decorated a bowsprit when Sidmouth harbour was in use at a later date.

The object comprises a group of a centaur with rider and charging beast set on a pedestal which rests on a shank, now broken; at the top of the shank and immediately below the pedestal is a heavy hook-like bracket. The whole measures 7 in. high (from the top of the centaur's head to the bottom of the broken shank) and 5 in. at its maximum width. It has been cast and is hollow, and is very much worn by the action of the sea, a pebble being still lodged in the mouth and another under the arm of the centaur. The shank also is hollow, about 1½ in. deep, and filled with lead, perhaps in modern times.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , April 1944 , pp. 22 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1944

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References

page 22 note 1 The original accounts, both apparently written by the same person, are to be found in Shortt, Collectanea Curiosa (published at Exeter in 1842), p. 43Google Scholar, pl. iii, and Gents. Magazine, i, 1843, 505Google Scholar, pl. x; Hutchinson, P. O., A New Guide to Sidmouth (1857), 2Google Scholar, 25, and in Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xviii (1862), 61Google Scholar ff.; hence Worth in Devon Assoc. Trans, xxiii, 81. The original owner, the Rev. N. S. Heineken of Sidmouth, gives the date of discovery as 1840 (Journal of Arch. Inst. xii, 194). For a more recent, but very brief, account by Major Gordon Hume see Illus. Lond. News, 14th August 1926, and apparently also by him at greater length in the Morning Post, 16th and 17th August 1926, where the object is said to have been lost and recently found again. I am indebted to the authorities of the Exeter Museum for permission to publish the object and for arranging that photographs should be taken.

page 22 note 2 The following list was made by Professor Haverfield and is now among his MSS. in the Ashmolean Museum. ‘According to Hutchinson's MS. History of Sidmouth in Exeter Free Library nearly 200 Roman coins have been found at Sidmouth at various times, many too common for careful preservation. The following are noted specifically, (i) On and near the beach, 1 “first brass” of Vespasian 1862; a “first brass” of Commodus (B.M. Cat. iv, 787, nos. 518–22 cf. Mattingly and Sydenham, Roman Imperial Coinage, iii, 411, no. 376 but Emperor to right on rev.) 1874; 1 Constantine i (apparently Cohen 513) found near the Chit Rock 1840—all copper. P. O. Hutchinson, MS. Hist, and Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xviii (1862), 61 f. (where he also mentions a Greek coin of Bactria found 1851 or 1855) and Devon Assoc. Trans, vii, 198, hence Davidson, , Notes on the antiquities of Devonshire (1861) 72Google Scholar; all in Exeter (Albert Memorial) Museum, (ii) Old Fore Street, 1874, a “first brass of Nerva”. Hutchinson MS.; Exeter Mus. (iii) Burial ground, 1850, a “first” or “second brass” of Faustina, B.A.A. xviii, 62; Hutchinson MS.; Exeter Mus. (iv) Mill Cross, Dec. 1850, a “third brass” of Claudius Gothicus. Hid. (v) Broadway, 1876, an illegible “second brass” “Hadrian or Gordian”, Devon Assoc. Trans, viii, 439, hence ibid, xxiii, 81; Hutchinson MS.; Exeter Mus. (vi) ‘In the road near a deep pool in the river called Horse's Belly’, in 1879, a Valentinian ii (probably Cohen, no.22); Heineken in Devon Assoc. Trans, xiv, 122, hence ibid, xxiii, 81. (vii) ‘Hutchinson MS. notes a “second brass” of (?) Vespasian and 6 illegible Roman coins without locality.’ We may add the following: P. O. Hutchinson in A New Guide to Sidmouth (1857), 2, records generally ‘a coin of Claudius, another of Faustina i and one of Gallienus and some others, the property of Mr. N. S. Heineken’. Worth, Devon Assoc. Trans, xxiii (1891), 81, gives a general list of coins of Nerva, Vespasian, Faustina, Pius, Claudius Gothicus, Victorinus, Hadrian or Gordian, Constantine, Valentinian, and a Greek Bactrian, all apparently from the sources given above.

page 24 note 1 Robert, Die antiken Sarkophagreliefs, ii, pl. vii; cf. the scenes on a marble and mosaic relief in the Capitoline Museum, Rome, Catalogue (1912), text, p. 45, no. 1, plate 9 1.

page 24 note 2 Cf. Tensa, Capitoline, The Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori (ed. Jones, H. Stuart, 1926). Text, p. 182Google Scholar, pl. lxx, no. 2 and cf. F. Staehlin, Mitt, des Arch. Inst., Röm. Abt. xxi, 340 ff.

page 24 note 3 Mattingly, Sydenham, and Webb, The Roman Imperial Coinage, v, i, (1927), 94Google Scholar (Gallienus nos. 332–8), 145 (ibid. nos. 163–4), 180 (ibid. no. 558); v, ii, 412 (Tetricus i, no. 151), 425 (Tetricus ii, 292), 480 (Carausius no. 187) and 487 (ibid. no. 272, with LEG iiii FL regarded as a blunder of the mint, see preface p. 440). On these coins the centaur is shown holding a globe, club, sceptre, trophy, spear, bow, pedum, or lyre, and only once hurling a javelin and once shooting from a bow.

page 24 note 4 First published in Soc. Antiq. Newcastle upon Tyne Proc. ser. 2, x, 1901, 77, when it was in the possession of Mr. T. D. Veitch; poor illustration, ibid. ser. 3, iv, 1909, plate facing p. 18; it was then in the possession of Mr. John Taylor, Newcastle upon Tyne. Mr. James Mclntyre tells me that its present whereabouts are unknown. It is referred to by Richmond, I. A. in Papers of British School at Rome, xiii, 1935, 8Google Scholar, note 4. For similar capitals as pedestals for supporting badges shown on Trajan's Column see Domaszewski, Die Fahnen im rb'mischen Heere, 33, 41, and 74, the last a ram (= Cichorius, Die Reliefs d. Traianssaule, i, 227 (scene xlviii), Taf. 35, 122), the badge of Legio I Minervia.

page 25 note 1 Daremberg and Saglio, Diet, des Antiquiéy, s.v. ‘signum’; Domaszewski, Die Fahnen im romischen Heere, 35; Renel, ‘Cultes militaires de Rome: les enseignes’ (Annales de PUniv. de Lyon, n.s., ii, fasc. 12, 1903), 206 ff., 228 ff. Stuart Jones, Companion to Roman History, 210 ff. A good example of a standard with a boar badge is in the British Museum, B.M. Catal. of Bronzes, no. 2907, and has never been reproduced except in an outline drawing in Daremberg and Saglio, op. cit.; in war time it is not available for photography.

page 25 note 2 M. Wuilleumier's list is fuller than that by Schwendemann, who first treated the subject in Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, xxxvi, 1921, 98Google Scholar ff., 108 ff; cf. Edgar, C. C., Greek Bronzes (Cat. général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, 1904), pl. xiii, 27Google Scholar. 817 and 818; pl. vii, 27. 820–9. Two good examples in silver of Augustan date, in part restored, were found in the Hildesheim hoard-Pernice and Winter Der Hildesheimer Silberfund (Berlin 1901), plate xxvii, pp. 54–7Google Scholar, fig. 26. In a letter to me dated 22nd March 1930 M. Wuilleumier agrees with me in thinking that the Sidmouth bronze is a tripod mount, particularly if the shank is hollow, as it is. It is not possible in war time to communicate with M. Wuilleumier or the Editors of Milanges d'Arckiologie et d'Histoire, and we must ask them to excuse the reproduction of the illustrations shown on plate ix without the permisssion which in peace time we feel sure would readily have been given.

page 26 note 1 Smith, and Hutton, , Wyndham Cook Coll. Catal. (1908), 121Google Scholar, pl. XLIV.