be obviously connected (Plate LXXXVII., Fig. 34). They had, in fact, belonged to an article exactly like the gold chain said to have been found near Backworth, Northumberland, and illustrated in Bruce's Roman Wall.[1] This latter chain, together with two others found at the same place, one of which differs somewhat in the link and has no crescent, is now preserved in the British Museum, where are also a similar chain of gold with the wheel, but without the crescent, and an isolated wheel-pendant from Llandovery, Carmarthenshire.[2]
No doubt both the wheel and the crescent, ancient symbols of the sun and moon, were used as amulets. The crescent is often to be seen on Roman monuments and metal work, and in such little charms as the one under consideration. The lunula was intended to serve as a protection against the evil eye. An almost similar crescent of silver was recently found under the chin of a child's skeleton at Nida, the Roman station at Heddernheim near Frankfurt; it had probably been worn on a cord which had perished. We may infer that it had been hung round the neck of the new-born child, just as small heart-shaped brooches of silver were used in later times in Scotland for the same purpose. The amulets from a necklace of the kind, consisting of four lunulae of silver, were found in a grave at Trier associated with a tall urn of glass and a coin of Domitian, which showed little or no sign of use,[3] A bronze chain with its lunula was found at Pfünz.[4]
Wheels, which were clearly amulets, have been found in large numbers on pre-Roman sites in Gaul, which we may suppose to have been centres of religious ceremonies. As the worship of the Roman gods spread beyond the Alps, the sun-symbol apparently became an attribute of the Gaulish Jupiter. A bronze statuette in the Museum of St. Germain-en-Laye shows a male figure standing holding a six-rayed wheel; it bears the inscription IOVI · OPTIMO · MAXIMO · ET · NVMINI · AVGVSTI. A second example in the same collection grasps a thunderbolt in his right hand and a wheel in his left.[5] An earthenware mould discovered at Corbridge-on-Tyne during the recent excavations provides a third instance of the combination. The figure which it produces is illustrated in Fig. 49. It stands about 4½ inches high, and probably represents some Gallo-Roman or Romano-British conception of Jupiter.
1 P. 427.
2 Archaeological Journal, vol. viii. p. 39.
3 Kropatscheck; 'Zwei römische Amulette,' Römisch-germanisches Korrespondenzblatt, Jahrgang, ii. p. 24.
4 Der Obergermanisch-Raetische Limes, Lief. 14, 'Kastell Pfünz,' Taf. xiii. Fig. 9.
5 Reinach, Bronzes figurés de la Gaule romaine, figs. 4 and 5.
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