Roman Bath(s)– Part Three

The more one studies this site, the more one realize it was mainly a religious site, and only secondarily a bath, with the bath serving not just cleansing purposes but medicinal ones. Here is a drawing of what the full site would have looked like… Not just one or two temples, but a whole temple precinct, which included a temple for the premiere healing deity Romans turned to— Asclepius. Unlike Unlike curse tablets, there were also requests to the god of healing made on lead sheets….. There were religious processions led by priests, and it appears the archaeologists have discovered the lead mask carried by one of these priests… Romans did not go anywhere without the military when they were trying to take over new territory, like Britannia. It is thus no surprise that we find honorific columns to 2 legions here, one of which was erected in honor of a fallen soldier named Julius. This is a statue of an honored deceased ‘optio’ i.e. a communicator with the army. An ‘optio’ was second in command to a centurion and he carried his staff and a scroll with him. Presumably he would have to have learned to communicate with the locals, who did not know Latin, so part of his job would be as a l...