Amazing altar unearthed at Vindolanda Roman fort

Jul 15 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

Prof Anthony Birley, chairman of the Vindolanda Trust, said that Sulpicius Pudens was ‘surely’ the same man who was named as commander of the Fourth Gauls on another altar, found in 1949 reused in a medieval tower of Staward Pele, four miles from Vindolanda.

He said the god was originally an ancient weather deity but later "the cult took off and spread all over the empire, in frontier provinces, being favoured by officers and men of the Roman army." Patricia Birley, director of the Vindolanda Trust, said alters were often dedicated to gods as thanks for granting requests and wishes.

"Perhaps what the prefect had asked for had come to pass and he fulfilled his vow by paying out for this expensive stone," she said.

"It would have cost him a bob or two." The shrine has also given up the bottom half of a second altar, dedicated by a prefect of the Second Cohort of Nervians, who came from what is now the French-Belgian border area.

After serving at Vindolanda, they transferred to Whitley Castle fort in the South Tyne Valley.

The fort, known as Epiacum to the Romans, has seven layers of defences in the form of ditches and banks – one of only three sites in the country to have such a complex system.

It is just off the Pennine Way and on the Maiden Way, which linked Whitley Castle with Carvoran fort on Hadrian’s Wall and, in the opposite direction, Kirby Thore fort near Appleby in Cumbria.

It is believed that the main purpose of the fort was to control the lead mining on Alston Moor.

Click the links below for more on previous finds at Vindolanda
Romans were upper crust on daily bread
Treasured higher than gold and jewels
Roman treasures coming home to Vindolanda
Witness to the march of time