March: month of Minerva

This is the beautiful and powerful goddess, Sulis Minerva. She is my favourite of all the Roman pantheon, for good reason. Her main festival, Quinquatria, took place 19-23 March, and involved processions, games and worship involving guilds of craftsmen and artists.

By the way, I found this craftsman busy in Bath when I last visited a year ago. He inspired me to create a major new character, Sulinus, a master mason and builder.

[Sulinus, my master mason, carrying on his trade in Aqua Sulis. Thanks to Bath Roman Museum.]

Getting back to Minerva, she was one of the Capitoline triad, the three most revered and senior gods central to the religion of Rome: Jupiter, the king of the gods; Juno, his consort; and Minerva, their daughter. As such, Minerva had a key role in protecting the Roman state as goddess of strategic warfare. She was also the goddess of law and justice, and patron of the arts, medicine, commerce and the crafts. There is scarcely an aspect of Roman life Minerva held no sway over.

Her name in very early Italic means “intelligent, understanding”. She is often depicted as armed and helmeted, mighty in warfare but battling for justice, in sympathy with the fallen, rather than a belligerent attacker like Mars. Her symbolic bird, the little owl, represents her wisdom.

In Bath, where she was conflated with the local goddess Sulis, she was thought of as conferring healing through the famed hot springs, whilst not being a water deity as such. People came on pilgrimage from all over the western Roman provinces to seek Minerva’s healing and wisdom at Aquae Sulis (as the Romans knew Bath). It has to be said, they also came for relaxation, gambling, marriage-making, and just a good time, allured by the huge baths complex and Minerva’s imposing temple.

[Author’s own image: cutaway models of the temple of Minerva and her sacred spring in Bath.]

I was fascinated to discover while researching my current novel, The Bath Curse, that Aquae Sulis apparently had none of the normal Roman provincial governance, being ruled by neither military commandants nor elected town councils and magistrates. That suggested to me that the pre-eminence of Sulis Minerva and her servants in Bath — being the priests of her temple together with associated clerks, administrators and tax collectors — would have created a unique atmosphere quite unlike anywhere else in Roman Britain. Add in a constant stream of wealthy visitors and retired army officers, and you’ve got a heady mix of money and power. Loyal readers won’t be surprised that my version of Quinquatria begins with a lavish feast in honour of the goddess (soon to be marred by a high-profile poisoning that isn’t on the menu).

So happy Quinquatria, Sulis Minerva — and let’s hope we all get away from the festival in one piece!

Before I move on to my monthly news and a book review, a point has been raised by a reader that might be worth explaining. My reader mentioned in her recent review on Amazon for The Governor’s Man that she thought I had made a mistake citing Ermin Street/Way as coming out of Cirencester (Corinium in the book). She thought I must be alluding to Ermine Street (which actually runs up the east coast of England, linking London to Lincoln.) In case anyone else is wondering, I do really mean Ermin (without the final ‘e’). It’s a pity the Anglo-Saxons, amazed at the paved highways they found, couldn’t come up with a wider range of names; or that we no longer know the original Roman names. (Guess how many Watling Streets there are — I’ll leave that conundrum with you for homework.)

My March news/upcoming author events

• my live interview with the lovely Nicky Price of BBC Radio Gloucestershire went swimmingly on 4 March. We talked all things Roman Gloucestershire, and had a lot of fun. You can catch the interview on BBC Sounds for a few more days, at:

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hb0vkn?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

  [Scroll forward to 2.20, just after Cockney Rebel Come Up and See Me. Gosh, that takes me back!]

• The week after, I was guest speaker for St Gabriels’ WI at Hanley Swan, just the other side of the hill from our home. Sadly my hostess Carol wasn’t well, so I didn’t get to meet her in person (Carol, if you’re reading this, we all missed you!). It was a lovely afternoon, with lots of chat about research, writing and Roman Britain. And tea and lashings of fancy biscuits. Thank you, St Gabriel’s!

• The following Saturday came my long-awaited treat, the exhibition Legion: life in the Roman army, at the British Museum. It was of course amazing, if a little dimly-lit, but you’d expect that with so many precious artefacts from all round the empire. Here are a few highlights:

soldier's bravery award; an army boot; painted wooden shield; a pugio (dagger).

We celebrated by meeting friend and author of Walking the Antonine Wall Alan Montgomery, for some much-needed tea at the nearby London Review Bookshop.

If you haven’t seen this very special exhibition yet, you’ve got till 23 June. Go to British Museum to book.

• Coming up: I’ll be talking on 8 April to fellow members of my local Herefordshire Society of Authors branch about my research and how I write. Fortunately we’re meeting on Zoom, as we live in a very big county with no motorways!

• Beyond April, I’ll be preparing for National Crime Reading Month in June, hoping to support Worcs libraries again. More to come on that.

• Plus I’m getting ready to air my roba and palla ahead of a special guest appearance in June at Lagentium Roman Festival, (Castleford, West Yorks). I’m really excited about this event. Not only is it a first for both me and the festival to have a Roman author, I believe, but Lagentium is very special to me. This unassuming Yorkshire town has not forgotten its history. After a visit to friends there, I gave the town a key role in an early chapter of The Loyal Centurion. It’s here (in what was an important Roman commercial town and river crossing) that Quintus and Tiro first begin to suspect all is not well in the north of Britannia, after they discover the body of a young woman at the mansio. I’ll be talking about Lagentium and its role in Roman Britain, in the Castleford Library, 4.00pm on Saturday 1st June; I’d love to see you then! You can book tickets here.

• Recently I’ve been rabbiting on about Bath, the setting for my current work-in-progress, The Bath Curse. But I’ve already got my eye on Quintus Valerius #5, working title The Irish Slave. So I’m thinking ahead to a research trip for this one, which will take me to Dublin, Drumanagh promontory — site of a probable Roman trading post, and the sacred and deeply historical Tara of the High Kings. Hopefully late summer, this year. More fun to come for Quintus and all the gang!

And finally, I leave you with a long overdue book review. The wonderful writer Andrew Taylor lives not a million miles away from me, and I’m becoming a big fan of his Ashes of London series, brilliant and wildly successful historical murder mysteries set at the time of the restoration of Charles II. Briefly, here’s what I made of the first of the series:

Book Review: The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor

I’m late to this Restoration mystery series, but much better late than never, as I have discovered.

Andrew Taylor’s world of a new London rising from the ashes of the 1666 Great Fire is a treacherous, fast-paced place of intrigue and deadly politics. His male protagonist, James Marwood, lives precariously as the son of a now-demented Puritan supporter of the dead Cromwell. Tasked with investigating a sequence of murders, he soon stumbles across the trail of Cat Lovett, a remarkable young woman escaping a rapist. Cat, disguised as a servant, is determined to exact vengeance and to gain her freedom at a time when women had very little power.

Among a galaxy of shadowy figures circling the towering new King Charles 11, James and Cat move inexorably towards each other as Wren’s London begins its Phoenix-like rise to global city status.

Much more to come in this series, and I’m so looking forward to reading the rest.

[Jacquie’s latest Roman mystery, The Loyal Centurion, is out in ebook and paperback now. You can follow Jacquie on social media, watch her research videos, and read her non-fiction articles, by going to her Linktree.]