The Phallic Carving in Chesters’ Roman Fort

By Adam Parker, a PhD student in the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University, UK, and Associate Collections Curator at York Museums Trust.

Phallic carvings in stone were a prominent feature of the Roman world. These disembodied phalli were powerful apotropaic images, a feature often aptly demonstrated in relief carvings depicting a battle between a phallus and an evil eye.

As part of my PhD research on magic in Roman Britain I recorded a dataset of ancient magical objects, including all depictions of phalli from the province. I found records of 92 Romano-British phallic carvings in stone, two in ceramic building materials, and one on a large lead-alloy weight. The vast majority of phallic carvings from the Roman Empire were originally installed on a wall; evidence from Leptis Magna and Pompeii certainly bears this out. Those at Pompeii, in particular, suggest that phallic carvings were high up on walls. Very few Romano-British walls survive to a height of more than a few feet. In stone, very few remain in situ in a wall or floor, but those that do provide an excellent opportunity to consider the contextual use of ancient phallic carvings in stone.

Fig. 1. The auxiliary fort at Chesters (Cilurnum). Photo by Adam Parker.

One Romano-British phallic carving in particular is particularly of interest here. It was discovered during antiquarian excavations at the auxiliary fort at Chesters (Cilurnum) on Hadrian’s Wall (Parker 2017, no. 17; Collins 2020, no. 10). The wall was, at various points, the northern frontier of Britannia. Its construction began in 122 CE. The carving in question was discovered in situ in the floor of the Principia , the headquarters building and the administrative and spiritual hub of the fort, and depicts a simple ithyphallus in medium relief on a raised circular dais. The dais, 460 mm. in diameter, is broadly central within a rectangular flagstone, and the phallus is slightly off-centre within the circle. The phallus measured 250 mm. in length.

Romano-British Phallic Stone Carving

Fig. 2. Romano-British phallic stone carving. Photo by Adam Parker.

Broadly speaking, Catherine Johns’s (1982, 64) suggestion that phallic carvings were associated with liminal or transitional places seems to be upheld in the dataset of these objects from Roman Britain. Where spatial contexts are secure, we find them on gateways and doors, a window, the Hadrianic curtain wall and boundary walls, and bridges. They are also associated with socially important buildings like Principiae and bath-houses. The Chesters’ carving was unusual in being placed on the floor. Only one other phallic carving has been located in situ on the floor of a Romano-British building—an incised, and highly stylised, example from an extramural building at the fort of Vindolanda.

The installation of a phallic carving at a liminal space speaks to its function, namely the protection of physical spaces from malignant, supernatural influences. Thresholds and boundaries were thought to be particularly vulnerable spaces in the ancient world. The floor of the Principia doesn’t appear, at first glance, to be such a place. Principiae were socially important to the military structures of the Roman Empire. They were seats of power and the administrative, religious, and economic hub of Rome’s garrisons. Military standards, religious icons, and soldier’s pay was kept in the aedes—in the centre, at the back, of this building placed in the middle of the fort. It was thus a very secure place.

There is no evidence to suggest that phallic carvings required any form of “activation” for their apotropaic effects to be generated—no touch, no gestures, no prayers were required. And so it is unusual to find a phallic carving in relief on a floor. The Vindolanda example was incised, so would not have impeded an unwary walker, but Chesters’ raised profile might have provided a significant trip hazard to the unwary. Perhaps the phallic hazard was a source of humour? There is an argument that laughter was able to dispel the evil eye, though this seems an unusual motivation for a permanent fixture in the Principia of a Roman fort when bawdy humour could be much more easily sought.

The carving points (euphemistically) towards the entrance of the building, though it was set back several metres from it, and off to one side near the colonnade. There are examples of threshold mosaics which appear to have served an apotropaic function—the CAVE CANEM dog mosaic from Pompeii (Wilburn 2018) and a floor mosaic in an Ostia taberna inscribed with the phrase INBIDE CALCO TE (Dunbabin 1991)—inviting a visitor to the shop to trample upon envy. Several Romano-British villas included a central panel featuring Medusa, herself regarded as serving an apotropaic function. Perhaps the prominence of the phallic design invited itself to be walked upon?

It was away from the entrance and in an unexpected place for a phallus, both oddly conspicuous and hidden at the same time. Within my PhD research I argue that prominence and conspicuousness were integral features of how phallic imagery worked as an amulet in the ancient world. Thinking more broadly about ancient magic, however, an injection of the exotic and the unusual could also be a salient feature of many amulets—this unusual position was clearly deliberate, but perhaps the motivation was to place a phallus somewhere that it was not expected. All the better to surprise the evil eye? Ralph Merrifield (1969, 170) famously described the Roman phallic icon as a sort of “lightning conductor for bad luck” and much like a lightning conductor, the phallus had to be properly installed to face the oncoming danger in order to nullify it.

You can link to Parker’s blog, Roman Magic, here: https://romanmagic.wordpress.com/.

Bibliography

Collins, R. 2020. “The Phallus and the Frontier: The Form and Function of Phallic Imagery on Hadrian’s Wall.” Pages 274–309 in Un-Roman Sex: Gender, Sexuality, and Lovemaking in the Roman Provinces and Frontiers. Edited by T. Ivleva and R. Collins. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies. London and New York: Routledge.

Dunbabin, K. M. 1991. “INBIDE CALCO TE… Trampling upon the Envious.” Pages 26–37 in Tesserae: Festschrift für Josef Engemann. Edited by Ernst Dassmann and Klaus Thraede. Jarbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband 18. Münster: Aschendorff.

Johns, C. 1982. Sex and Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome. London: British Museum Press.

Merrifield, R. 1969. Roman London. London: Cassell.

Parker, A. 2017 “Protecting the Troops? Phallic Carvings in the North of Roman Britain.” Pages 117–30 in Ad Vallum: Papers in Celebration of Brian Dobson. Edited by A. Parker. BAR British Series 631. Oxford: British Archaeological Report.

Wilburn, A. T. 2018. “The Archaeology of Ritual in the Domestic Sphere: Case Studies from Karanis and Pompeii.” Pages 103–14 in Material Approaches to Ancient Magic: Occult Objects and Supernatural Substances. Edited by A. Parker and S. McKie. TRAC: Themes in Roman Archaeology 2. Oxford, Oxbow.



Citer ce billet
Thomas Blanton (2021, 14 juin). The Phallic Carving in Chesters’ Roman Fort. Genitalia & Co. Consulté le 18 avril 2024, à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/oywu

Thomas Blanton

Thomas R. Blanton IV holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus (Yale University Press, 2017), coeditor (with David B. Hollander and John T. Fitzgerald) of The Extramercantile Economies of Greek and Roman Cities: New Perspectives on the Economic History of Classical Antiquity (Routledge, 2019), and cochair of the Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy program unit at the Society of Biblical Literature. He is currently writing a monograph entitled The Circumcision of Abraham: Modeling Ritual from Genesis to the Letters of Paul for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

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  1. 03/12/2021

    […] V., and Totelin, L. (eds) Body Fluids in Antiquity. Routledge. 173-190.Parker, A. 2021. “The Phallic Carving in Chesters Roman Fort“, Genitalia & Co (BLOG) […]

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