“The Cemetery had for years been overcrowded with burned and unburned burials; rains had caused the mounds to settle and the ground had resumed its even surface.... I beg you to see that the earth is raised to a mound again, and to have a smooth slab placed upon it.”
—Sidonius, A.D. 467.
Jove and Giant Columns
A FEW of the more important sepulchral monuments have been reserved for special consideration. First among these I wish to discuss the fragments of what I suppose to have been examples of Jove and Giant columns, a class of monument frequently found on the Continent. These columns, it has been thought, were not naturalised in Britain. In Archæologia, lxix., Professor Haverfield, calling attention to an inscription at Cirencester, which seems to have formed part of a small column of the kind, said that except for this inscription no other evidence had been found in Britain for the existence of such columns. Again, in another place, after speaking of figures of the Mother Goddesses, he added, “We may ascribe to another immigrant the Colonne au géant found at Cirencester” (Romanization). A large number of these monuments has been found in north-east Gaul. The main element was a decorated column the capital of which supported a sculptured group of “Juppiter and a fallen barbarian giant.” Such a column usually stood on a pedestal having an inscription to the god; around the pedestal were relief sculptures of several figures, and there were four busts on the capital. Professor Haverfield, whose description I have been condensing, agreed with a suggestion made by Mrs. Strong that a fine Corinthian capital at Cirencester, which has four busts set among the acanthus leafage, may have belonged to the Jove and Giant pillar. This, however, is negatived by the scale of the capital as compared with the inscribed stone, which is only about 1½ ft. square. Further, as he himself allowed, a second capital similar to the other exists, except for its upper part. Both the complete capital and the fragment were found on the site of the Basilica, and we may hardly doubt that both belonged to that building.
Fig. 53.
Jove and Giant pillars, as I have called them, have been exhaustively treated in a German work (Hertlein, 1910). Espèrandieu, in his volumes on Roman sculptures in Gaul, very fully illustrates two of these monuments, one at Cussy-la-Colonne, near Autun (2032), and another at Merten (4425), also a large number of fragments. He describes the Cussy column as having been about 44 ft. high (including the sculptured group) and 2 ft. in diameter; the bottom of the pillar was carved in a trellis pattern (Fig. [53]). The column at Merten was about 48 ft. high with a diameter of 2¼ ft. Under the number 4130, Espèrandieu says of a square sculptured stone: “It is generally agreed that these ‘four-god stones’ are not altars but pedestals. They supported a second stone, usually of octagonal form, with representations of the Gods of the Week upon it. From this rose a column and capital, and, crowning all, a god riding and crushing under the hoofs of his steed a giant who terminates in two snakes.” Such columns had a religious significance, and “their frequency, above all on the banks of the Rhine, is surprising” (No. 4425). A good résumé of what had been said of these monuments was given by Mrs. Strong in 1911 (J.R.S.); the general conclusion was that the Jove of the pillar was a sun and thunder divinity, “A Romanised sun-god”; the columns embodied “a whole allegory of times and seasons.” “Hertlein interprets the columns as Irmin-säulen, symbols of the universe; columns such as, according to Teutonic mythology, supported the heavens, here typified by Juppiter as lord of the skies.” Some writers had preferred to see a Roman emperor riding over a barbarian.
In the British Museum there is a carved fragment of a highly decorated column which, I have little doubt, belonged to a Jove and Giant column. This stone was found built into the lower part of the City Wall along the river bank. Roach Smith, in whose collection it was, described it first in 1844 (Archæol. Jour., vol. i.) as: “A portion of a decorated stone which appears to have formed part of an altar.” Later he visited the Jove and Giant column near Autun, and in describing it in Collectanea Antiqua (vol. vi.) he refers to our stone. Subsequently in the Catalogue of his collection he spoke of the stone as: “Fragment in green sandstone, with a trellis pattern with leaves and fruit. It appears to have formed part of a sepulchral monument, and was taken from the foundations of a Roman wall in Thames Street.” In saying this he doubtless had the Cussy monument in his mind, for that was understood to be a sepulchral monument. Our fragment is from a circular shaft which must have been about 2½ ft. in diameter. The surface is carved over with a pattern like a trellis of laths, in the interspaces of which appear leaves and bunches of grapes Fig. [54] is restored from the fragment).
Fig. 54.