cover image Sacred Britannia: The Gods and Rituals of Roman Britain

Sacred Britannia: The Gods and Rituals of Roman Britain

Miranda Aldhouse-Green. Thames & Hudson, $29.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-500-25222-2

Aldhouse-Green (Bog Bodies Uncovered) presents an intricate collage of the various religions that collided in Britain from Claudius’s conquest in 55 BCE to the early fifth century CE. During this period, disparate faiths met, shared space, and borrowed from one another after the Romans took control of England, which, at the time of their arrival, was a strange, wild space. Aldhouse-Green begins with a discussion of the Druids then covers the various religions that came along with the Roman empire. Not only did Rome bring its imperial Jupiter worship but it also imported soldiers and mercenaries from far-flung places. An auxiliary of Syrian archers, for example, built a temple to the Syrian goddess Cybele near Hadrian’s wall. Aldhouse-Green considers what statues, relief carvings, and tombstones say about ancient peoples’ faiths (her section on Roman-Gallic tombs and human sacrifice is particularly revealing). With careful, methodical precision, Aldhouse-Green will convince readers of the accuracy of the facts and the reliability of her timelines about the intermingling of faiths. This will be an invaluable book for anyone interested in the early mixing and hybridized of faith in the ancient world. (Aug.)