A Gilded Roman Bronze Leg, Found in a Scottish Bog in 1820, Goes on Show in Edinburgh
A gilded bronze lower leg and foot, once part of a huge Roman statue of a rider on horseback, is set to be a highlight of a new show in Edinburgh, according to ArtNews.
The fragment was found in a bog at Milsington, in Scotland, in 1820. It dates to around 140 CE, when Rome still held large parts of northern Britain. Its metal has kept traces of gold, which is why it looks so bright in old drawings and photos.
For a long time, the leg was believed to have been taken by Scottish tribes from a Roman site further south. That is no longer the main view. Experts now think the statue was set up locally, in Scotland, by Roman conquerors.
A new analysis by National Museums Scotland, the body that runs the museum in Edinburgh, found that the bronze limb had been carefully taken off its parent statue. That points to a deliberate dismantling rather than a violent smash. Someone took the statue apart on purpose.
Archaeologists now think the statue showed Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. He led Rome's second major military campaign into Scotland. Under his rule, Roman forces built the Antonine Wall, a turf barrier that ran across what is now Scotland's Central Belt, the crowded band of land between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The wall did not hold for long. Attacks by Caledonian tribes, the peoples of northern Scotland, forced the Romans to pull back south to Hadrian's Wall less than a generation later. Hadrian's Wall, built further south on the border with England, became the new limit.
A study of sculpture fragments from Roman Scotland also found that imperial statues were a feature of Roman frontier forts. In other words, the army and its officials displayed images of the emperor even this far from Rome. The bronze leg fits that pattern.
The find will be shown in 'Roman Scotland: Life on the Edge of Empire', an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh that runs from 14 November to 18 April. Fraser Hunter, the principal curator of the show, leads the project. The exhibition is built around the everyday lives of people living at the edge of the Roman world, and the leg is one of its key objects.
For visitors, the appeal is simple. A piece of a statue that once stood on a hill in Roman Scotland is now close enough to look at face to face. The leg is a reminder that the empire's power was built in part through bronze and gold, and that it reached all the way to the north of Britain.
Anyone planning a trip can check the museum's website for opening times and tickets before going.
