The Mildenhall Treasure

There's a handy spin-off to lingering in Lincolnshire awhile: it's a lot nearer London than Devon is - only just over an hour on the train. So we visited the special exhibition at the British Museum: "Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum". Excellent - very moving, but also interesting. Our historical knowledge of everyday life in Roman households benefits hugely from the enormous human tragedy of Vesuvius's eruption in 79 A.D. Well worth a visit!

We managed to get tickets on the day (they reserve some each day for people who haven't booked and we were lucky). While we waited for our ticket time we had a look at the Mildenhall treasure: this wonderful solid silver 'Great Dish'. It would have been the centrepiece at a Roman-British feast and was unearthed by a farmer's tractor in Sussex in 1942. See Fine dining in Roman Britain.

The centre medallion depicts Oceanus, surrounded by sea-nymphs riding fantastical sea-creatures. If you think of the dish as a clock-face, at 3 o' clock is a maenad, holding a tambourine and dancing with Pan, who is holding his pipes*; at 6 o'clock is a dancing satyr; at 9 o' clock is a drunken Hercules, his club and lionskin at his feet, and supported by a pair of Satyrs, and at 12 o' clock is Bacchus, the god of wine.

*blipped as a close-up!

The dish is a couple of feet wide and weighs around 17 pounds. Definitely brightened a rainy day!