Aquae Sulis (

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

for ''Waters of Sulis'') was a small

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

in the

Roman province The Roman provinces (, pl. ) were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as Roman g ...

Britannia The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...

. Today it is the English city of

Bath, Somerset Bath (Received Pronunciation, RP: , ) is a city in Somerset, England, known for and named after its Roman Baths (Bath), Roman-built baths. At the 2021 census, the population was 94,092. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, Bristol, River A ...

. The

Antonine Itinerary The Antonine Itinerary (, "Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus") is an , a register of the stations and distances along various roads. Seemingly based on official documents, possibly in part from a survey carried out under Augustus, it describes t ...

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

records the town as ''Aquae calidae'' (warm waters) in his 2nd-century work ''

Geographia The ''Geography'' (, , "Geographical Guidance"), also known by its Latin names as the ' and the ', is a gazetteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, compiling the geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. Originally wri ...

'', where it is listed as one of the cities of the

Belgae The Belgae ( , ) were a large confederation of tribes living in northern Gaul, between the English Channel, the west bank of the Rhine, and the northern bank of the river Seine, from at least the third century BC. They were discussed in depth b ...

Development

Baths and temple complex

The Romans probably began building a formal temple complex at Aquae Sulis in the AD 60s. The Romans had probably arrived in the area shortly after their arrival in Britain in AD 43 and there is evidence that their military road, the

Fosse Way The Fosse Way was a Roman road built in Britain during the first and second centuries AD that linked Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) in the southwest and Lindum Colonia ( Lincoln) to the northeast, via Lindinis ( Ilchester), Aquae Sulis ( Bat ...

, crossed the river Avon at Bath. An early Roman military presence has been found just to the North-East of the bath complex in the Walcot area of modern Bath. Not far from the crossing point of their road, they would have been attracted by the large natural hot spring which had been a shrine of the

Celt The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...

Brython The Britons ( *''Pritanī'', , ), also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, ...

s, dedicated to their goddess Sulis. This spring is a natural mineral spring found in the valley of the Avon River in Southwest England, it is the only spring in Britain officially designated as hot. The name is Latin for "the waters of Sulis". The Romans identified the goddess with their goddess

Minerva Minerva (; ; ) is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Be ...

and encouraged her worship. The similarities between Minerva and Sulis helped the Celts adapt to Roman culture. The spring was built up into a major

Roman Baths In ancient Rome, (from Greek , "hot") and (from Greek ) were facilities for bathing. usually refers to the large Roman Empire, imperial public bath, bath complexes, while were smaller-scale facilities, public or private, that existed i ...

complex associated with an adjoining

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

. About 130 messages to Sulis scratched onto lead curse tablets (''defixiones'') have been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists. Most of them were written in

, although one discovered was in Brythonic; they usually laid curses upon those whom the writer felt had done them wrong. This collection is the most important found in Britain. The Brythonic curse recovered on a metal pendant is the only sentence in the language that has been discovered. It reads:

''Adixoui Deuina Deieda Andagin Uindiorix cuamenai'' or maybe ''Adixoui Deiana Deieda Andagin Uindiorix cuamiun ai''

''The affixed – Deuina, Deieda, Andagin, (and) Uindiorix – I have bound''

An alternative translation based on a translation of certain words as non-proper nouns is the following:

''May I, Windiorix for/at Cuamena defeat (alt. ''summon to justice'') the worthless woman, oh divine Deieda.''

(Alt. ''Divine Deiada, may I, Windiorix, bring to justice/defeat (in court) the woman at Cuamena''.) This is still an uncertain translation in that it takes into account the nominal cases of the nouns: ''Windiorix'' (alt. ''Windorix'') - nominative masculine (subject), lit. "fair-headed" (''windo'') "king" (''rix''); ''Dewina Deieda'' - nominative/vocative feminine "divine Deieda" (''deiada'' "goddess"); ''Andagin'' - accusative feminine "woman"; ''Cuamenai'' - locative/dative feminine of ''Cuamena''

Gaius Julius Solinus __NOTOC__ Gaius Julius Solinus, better known simply as Solinus, was a Latin grammarian, geographer, and compiler who probably flourished in the early 3rd century AD. Historical scholar Theodor Mommsen dates him to the middle of the 3rd century. ...

remarks "The circumference of Britain is 4875 miles. In this space are many great rivers, and hot springs refined with opulent splendour for the use of mortal men. Minerva is the patroness of these springs. In her shrine, the perpetual fires never whiten into ashes. When they dwindle away, they change into stony globules."

Walled town

It was the religious settlement, rather than the road junction further north and the residential area now known as Walcot, which was given defensive stone walls, probably in the 3rd century. The area within - of approximately - was largely open ground, but soon began to be filled in. There is some dispute as to whether these new buildings were private dwellings or were associated with servicing the

pilgrim The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as ...

s to the temple. There was also a ribbon development along the northern road outside the walls and cemeteries beyond.

Decline

From the later 3rd century on, the

Western Roman Empire In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. ...

and its urban life declined. The great suite of baths fell into disrepair but some use of the hot springs continued. After the

end of Roman rule in Britain The end of Roman rule in Britain occurred as the military forces of Roman Britain withdrew to defend or seize the Western Roman Empire's continental core, leaving behind an autonomous post-Roman Britain. In 383, the usurper Magnus Maximus wit ...

around AD 410, some residents seem to have remained but violence appears to have taken root. Archaeological evidence of chaos and piratical raids on the few citizens who remained resident in the 440s include the finding of a young girl's severed head in an oven in Abbeygate Street during excavations in 1984–1985. As far back as

Geoffrey of Monmouth Geoffrey of Monmouth (; ; ) was a Catholic cleric from Monmouth, Wales, and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle '' The History of ...

, the

Arthurian According to legends, King Arthur (; ; ; ) was a king of Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Ro ...

Battle of Mons Badonicus The Battle of Badon, also known as the Battle of Mons Badonicus, was purportedly fought between Celtic Britons, Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Post-Roman Britain during the late 5th century in England, 5th or early 6th century in England, 6th cen ...

() has been suggested to have taken place near Aquae Sulis. Tim and Annette Burkitt have proposed ''Caer Badden'' (), bout north-east of the Roman mines at Charterhouse, on the basis of the ''Welsh Annals'', as well as archaeological and toponymic evidence.

Medieval legend

In medieval times, the Roman temple at Bath was incorporated into British legend. The thermal springs at Bath were said to have been dedicated to Minerva by the legendary King Bladud and the temple there endowed with an eternal flame. An 8th century poem in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

, ''

The Ruin "The Ruin of the Empire", or simply "The Ruin", is an elegy in Old English, written by an unknown author probably in the 8th or 9th century, and published in the 10th century in the '' Exeter Book'', a large collection of poems and riddles. The ...

'', describing the ruinous changes that had overtaken a Roman hot-water spring, is assumed to be a reference to Aquae Sulis. The poem was copied in the

Exeter Book The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Englis ...

for transmission to future generations.

Remains

Rediscovered from the 18th century onward, the city's Roman remains have become one of Bath's main attractions. They may be viewed almost exclusively at the Roman Baths Museum, which houses: *Artefacts recovered from the Baths and the Roman town. There is a fine collection of stone sculptures. *Excavated remains of the main temple courtyard. *The Roman Baths themselves, though some lie below 18th century stonework. Of particular note is the original Roman Great Bath still lead-lined and fed by the sacred spring through Roman lead pipes. *A hoard of 30,000 silver coins, one of the largest discovered in Britain, was unearthed in an archaeological dig in 2012. The coins, believed to date from the 3rd century, were found not far away from the Roman baths.

References

{{Reflist History of Somerset Archaeological sites in Somerset Roman town of Bath Roman religious sites in England Roman towns and cities in England Hot springs of the United Kingdom 1st-century establishments in Roman Britain