Bacchus in Roman Britain: Archaeological Evidence for His Cult. (Volumes I and II).

The worship of Graeco-Roman deities in the northwestern Roman Empire has been sadly neglected by historians of religion. My dissertation attempts to fill in a part of this picture through study of Dionysiaca from Roman Britain, the method being to compile and analyze relevant artifacts from the isl and , the goal being to trace the history and assess the significance of Bacchus' cult there. A wider concern underlying the project was to gain some insight into the nature and extent of Bacchus' appeal to people throughout the northwest and , ultimately, throughout the Empire. The dissertation comprises two parts: a catalogue raisonne of approximately 400 Roman-British Dionysiaca, and several chapters devoted to evaluation of this material. The first provides a brief survey of scholarship on the Bacchic cult in the Roman northwest; the second gives a basic outline of Bacchic iconography. A third chapter deals with the criteria used to distinguish Bacchic cult objects from the mass of related finds; a fourth surveys Romano-British Dionysiaca as they have come to light in four distinct milieux--forts, major towns, minor settlements, and villas. Upon examining the evidence in its socio-economic context, I found that it presented a substantial challenge to commonly held views on the Bacchic cult, e.g., that it appealed solely to "people who loved a pleasant and luxurious life." (M. P. Nilsson, The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age {Lund, 1957}, 146.) Moreover, by tabulating such items as temple sculpture, ritual vessels, and funerary monuments, I found that another quite common assumption was undermined--namely, that "these people were not in earnest about religion" but merely "wanted a little thrill of {it} as a spice to the daily routine." (Ibid., 146-147) Other st and ard hypotheses about the cult--for instance, that it was present only in highly Romanized areas and never progressed to regions where viticulture was unknown--must also be revised in light of these finds from Roman Britain. The wider implications of the study for the history of Bacchic religion are summarized in a concluding chapter to the dissertation.PhDFine artsUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159393/1/8314293.pd