ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Fig. II. Capital found at k on General Plan. 



SO unsatisfactorily explored. We do not even know what roads led to 

 Irchester. A roadway ran east a little way (plan, d), another has been 

 traced issuing from the south gate and was very conjecturally laid down 

 on the older ordnance maps as continuing southwards, but we have no 

 indication of where it went. We must be content to leave these details 

 alone till better evidence appears. The judicious expenditure of a few 

 hundred pounds in excavation here would be well worth while, and 

 should commend itself to those in the county who care for the past. 



Various discoveries made within the walls in 1879 or earlier 

 deserve our notice. Fragments of columns, some seen by Morton, one 

 capital found in 1879 and now at Chester House (plan, k, fig. 11) 

 indicate a building of architec- 

 tural pretensions. A headless, 

 legless, much weathered torso 

 of a nude male figure, not badly 

 executed in local stone, was 

 found in 1879 built into an 

 ancient wall, and is now at 

 Northampton Museum (plan,K). 



Still more interesting are two fragments of sculptured stone found in 

 1879 and now at Chester House (plan, l, fig. 12). They may, as the 



late Sir Henry Dryden sug- 

 gested, belong to an octagonal 

 monument which originally 

 represented in eight panels the 

 deities of the days of the week. 

 Most of the ancient European 

 peoples divided the lunar 

 month into four quarters of 

 seven davs each ; the Romans 

 preferred four quarters of eight 

 days. The notion of connect- 

 ing these days with certain 

 deities was familiar to the 

 Romans at least as early as the 

 first century of our era, and 

 representations of these deities 

 occur in various parts of the 

 empire, notably in Roman 

 Germany. The deities are 

 Saturn, Sol, Luna, Mars, Mer- 

 cury, Jupiter and Venus, with 

 Fortuna or Bonus Eventus or 

 the like for an eighth ; the 

 first seven appear to be the 

 real deities of the weekdays, the last is added either because the Roman 

 week had eight days or because eight figures can be arranged more 



181 



Fig. 12. 



Fragment of Octagonal Sculpture found 

 AT L ON General Plan. 



