Welsh Journals

A TEMPLE OF MITHRAS AT CAERNARVON- SEGONTIUM By GEORGE C. BOON, f.s.a. SIXTY years ago John Ward began a programme of excavation which has continued unbroken to this day, and has thrown much light upon the dispositions of Roman auxiliary forts in Wales. Yet knowledge of their vici is rudimentary, and for good reasons is likely to remain so. Most of the forts, perhaps all, possessed external buildings, and some of these have been excavated1: further, it is at present scarcely possible to go. Nevertheless, it is curious that no certain instance of a place of worship has hitherto come to notice, although temples, including Mithraea, have long been attested epigraphically and by sculpture at the two legionary bases of Caerleon and Chester.2 At Segontium3 there now arises an opportunity to record more details of a vie us already known to extend on three sides of the fort.4 The opportunity comes, however, in an unfortunate guise, namely as a consequence of the development of land adjoining the eastern comer of the castellum and formerly part of the farmsteads of Bryn- Llanbeblig and Ty Gwyn. Attention was drawn to this area after it was seen that the Caernarvon Borough Council's plans for a housing-estate envisaged an encroachment upon the fort-ditches. During the ensuing rescue-excavation, a watch was kept on trenches being cut for the laying of sewers, etc., and several discoveries in addition to the temple were made.5 The first traces of the Mithraeum -the fifth to be excavated in Britain (cf. Fig. 11)-were found on 2nd April, 1958, but at that time suggested merely that the comer of a rough, but substantial, Roman building had been truncated by the trenching. This was the basis on which an excavation was carried out in August, 1959, by the National Museum of Wales on behalf of the Ministry of Works and by permission of the Caernarvon Borough 1 V. E. Nash-Williams, The Roman Frontier in Wales (Cardiff, 1954), pp. 134 ff. 2 X. E. and A. H. Nash-Williams, Catalogue of the Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones found at Caerleon, Mon. (Cardiff, 1935), nos. 34, 81 R. P. and I. A. Richmond, Catalogue of the Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester (Chester, 1955), nos. 169, 171. 3 See the Segontium report cited, with other abbreviations, p. 172. 4 Segontium, Fig. p. 14 pp. 110-11. 5 To be reported in due course, when the housing estate is finished.