When Britain used supernatural policemen to hunt down its criminals

Curse tablets, from a now vanished temple near Uley, are revealing how Romano-Britons dealt with criminals

Forgotten past: Today the village of Uley, Gloucestershire looks calm and serene. But new research shows that, back in Roman times, the area was a ritual centre for persuading the gods to exact lethal revenge on local criminals (Chewstation/Geograph/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Roman Britain's pagan gods were turned into supernatural policemen and executioners to hunt down and punish criminals.

New research into dozens of documents from a now long-vanished Roman temple near Uley, Gloucestershire reveals how, in the absence of a police force, Romano-Britons effectively gave the job of law enforcement to their gods.

A detailed analysis of more than 80 letters written to the Roman deity, Mercury, implore him to help recover stolen goods and to punish the thieves who stole them.

The letters, written mainly by country people who lived in Gloucestershire some 18 centuries ago, sought divine assistance in tracking down, apprehending and punishing those responsible for stealing a wide range of property - everything from horses, cows, sheep and a beehive to textiles, rings (including a valuable gold one), a horse bridle, women's underwear, several cloaks, a hat, gloves, pewter plates, two wheels and large amounts of cash.

Two cases seem to have involved very substantial amounts of money. One letter asks Mercury for assistance in recovering 35,000 denarii (equivalent to well over £250,000 today!) - whereas another letter suggests that the god will be rewarded with 100,000 denarii if he succeeds in forcing a debtor to settle his very large debt with the letter writer.

Two other letters ask Mercury to take tough action against practitioners of black magic - specifically to stop enemies from using magic to harm farm animals.

Surviving the millennia: The Roman god, Mercury's slightly larger-than-life head which used to form part of his cult statue in the now long-vanished Uley temple. (The Trustees of the British Museum)

The letters (known as 'curse tablets') - all inscribed on pieces of lead - were found in the 1970s, but were so worn and difficult to read that it's only now that they have been transcribed and published.

The transcription and analysis operation was so complex and challenging that it took one of Britain's top Latin scholars, Oxford University’s Professor Roger Tomlin, more than two years of solid work to complete the task.

"The lead tablets are extremely important documents which are helping us to more fully understand life in Roman Britain and the way Romano-Britons thought," said Professor Tomlin, author of the recently published book about the letters, The Uley Tablets: Roman Curse Tablets from the Temple of Mercury at Uley

"The documents give us an opportunity to read in their own words what was going on in their minds," he said.

View of the Gloucestershire village of Uley - and the hill, on which the Late Iron Age shrine (and subsequently the Romano-British temple) used to stand. (Wikipedia)

Most of the 85 letters were written in Latin, but two were inscribed in a Celtic language - and one, though written in Latin, was inscribed in Greek script. The different languages, scripts and the names of the letter writers suggest that, even in the countryside, society was very multi-cultural.

The documents are important for three key reasons:

• First of all, they reveal that literacy was commonplace in Romano-British rural society. Up till now that had not been fully realised. Most of the letters were written in Latin despite the fact that the letter-writers' names suggest that many of them were probably of native British heritage, rather than of continental Roman ethnicity.
• Secondly, they reveal that crime was commonplace in the Romano-British countryside - and that people saw their gods as the only way to obtain justice. That fact demonstrates the very practical function that religion had in Roman Britain.
• Thirdly, together with two Celtic language documents found in Bath, the two Uley Celtic texts are beginning to reveal the indigenous language, spoken by many Romano- Britons, perhaps even a majority of the population. Up till now, scholars did not know whether the Bath documents were written in British Celtic or Gaulish (French Celtic). But at least one of the two Uley Celtic documents, being studied by Nottingham University linguist and historian, Professor Alex Mullen and former Cambridge Professor, Celticist Paul Russell seem to be written in the same language as the Bath ones - and, because of Uley’s rural non-metropolitan location, that fact suggests, for the first time, that the Uley and Bath Celtic documents were probably written in British Celtic, rather than in Gaulish.

Those four texts are therefore the only known likely examples of the native language spoken in Britain in late prehistoric times and in the Roman period. Up till now, the only way of gaining insights into how people spoke in ancient Britain had been to try to back-construct that long-lost language from southern Britain's modern Celtic languages (Welsh and Cornish) and by studying ancient Celtic names.

Digital terrain model of the Iron Age town, located adjacent to the site of the Late Iron Age shrine and Romano-British temple. The town's earthwork ramparts still survive - but are today largely obscured by trees. (Wikipedia/Rouven Meidlinger)

"The four Uley and Bath texts, offer unique insights into the Celtic language spoken within local communities in Roman Britain," said Professor Mullen.

But the vast majority of the Uley documents are written in Latin, the main language of the Roman Empire.

Map of Uley:

Many of the letters asked Mercury (and occasionally the war-god, Mars) not only to communicate with or track down criminals but also to act as executioner, if the criminal did not cooperate.

The messages asked the relevant god to use extreme measures to ensure that stolen property was returned and that other wrongdoing was stopped.

One letter asked Mercury to ensure that a criminal lost the ability to urinate, defecate, speak, sleep or have good health until he returned the goods he had stolen.

Another one asked the god to inflict ill health on a criminal and to not permit him to lie down or to sit or to drink or eat - until the stolen items were returned

One of the Uley tablets: On display at the British Museum, it asks Mercury to "exact vengeance for the gloves which have been [stolen]" and asks the god to "take blood and health from the person who has stolen them". (The Trustees of the British Museum)

A particularly harsh letter implored Mercury to ensure that a criminal’s entire family “languishes in sleeplessness with unknown ailments” and that they “repel everybody” by becoming “half-naked, toothless, trembling and gouty” and that nobody takes pity on them. The letter even implores the god to make sure that members of that thief's family die in “the most disgusting state, and that they do not find you merciful”.

If stolen goods were returned, the letter-writers often offered to 'pay' the god for his services - usually by giving him a specified share of the recovered goods.

The temple at Uley was not a traditional Roman one, but was instead a native British temple in which a Roman deity (Mercury) had been merged with a local native British one (probably called Arweriacus or Arwerius - perhaps the area's prosperity/fertility god). The local god's name features in many of the letters in conjunction with the name Mercury. Indeed the hill on which the temple stood seems to have been called the Hill of Arwerius.

The temple had begun in the late Iron Age, probably shortly before the mid 1st century AD Roman conquest, with Mercury being merged with Arwerius there sometime after the conquest. It was located just a few hundred metres from a major Iron Age town - and it is therefore likely that the temple had some connection with that population centre, either during or after the town’s period of occupation.

The temple was in use for at least 350 years - but seems to have either partially collapsed or been demolished in or after the late 4th century AD (when Britain was becoming increasingly Christianised).

However, the head of Mercury's larger-than-life sacred temple cult statue seems to have been so revered that local people, potentially his worshippers or ex-worshippers, very carefully laid it to rest it in a specially dug pit, just ten metres from the site of the temple.

In Roman tradition, Mercury was the god of money/prosperity, fertility/sex and divine communication who was particularly revered by merchants, but also specifically respected (perhaps significantly) by thieves.