(33) Mr. Bushe-Fox's second Report on his excavations at Wroxeter (Reports of the Research Committee of the London Society of Antiquaries, No. II, Oxford, 1914) deserves all the praise accorded to his first Report. I can only repeat what I said of that; it is an excellent description, full and careful, minute in its account of the smaller finds, lavishly illustrated, admirably printed, and sold for half a crown. The finds which it enumerates in detail I summarized in my Report for 1913, pp. 19-20—the temple with its interesting Italian plan, the fragments of sculpture which seem to belong to it, the crowd of small objects, the masses of Samian (indefatigably recorded), the 528 coins; all combine to make up an admirable pamphlet.
I will venture a suggestion on the temple. This, as I pointed out last year, is on the Italian, not on the Celto-Roman plan. But one item is not quite clear in it. All ordinary classical temples stood on podia or platforms which raised them above the surrounding surface at least to some small extent. Mr. Bushe-Fox speaks of a podium to the Wroxeter temple. But it appears that he does not mean a podium, as generally understood. The masonry which he denotes by that term was, in his opinion, buried underground and merely foundation.
THE WROXETER TEMPLE. ([p. 53])
The floor of the portico of the temple (he says) was about level with the floor of the court which surrounded the temple; the floor of the cella, though higher, was but a trifle higher (see figs. 26, 27). This view needs more reflection than he has given it in his rather brief account. No doubt a temple in a Celtic land might have been built on a classical plan, though without a classical podium. But it is not what one would most expect. Nor do I feel sure that it was actually done at Wroxeter in this case. The walls which Mr. Bushe-Fox explains as the foundations of the temple are quite needlessly good masonry for foundations never meant to be seen; this will be plain from figs. 27, 28, which I reproduce by permission from his Report. Further, as fig. 26 (from the same source) shows, there was outside the base of this masonry a level cobbled surface, for which no structural reason is to be found. This, one may guess, was a pavement at the original ground-level when the temple was first erected; from this, steps presumably led up to the floor of the portico and cella. The 'podium', then, was at first a real podium. Later, the ground-level rose, and the walls of the podium were buried.