Image: Centre piece of Roman Jupiter mount (FindID 195405-153331)

Description: Cast copper-alloy Roman eagle mount. It is small, quite worn and was not too well made to begin with. The eagle is standing upright, wings stretched out, looking left. Only its outlines are clear; there are no grooves or mouldings to indicate eyes or feathers. The outline of the eagle tapers towards a flat disc with broken-off sides which indicates that the eagle was a centre-piece of a (probably) circular ornament (see below). The reverse is plain except a tapering spike that is coming out of the centre of the mount - probably for attachment to a leather strap or belt. A similar eagle mount was discovered on the banks of the River Eden in Carlisle ('The Swifts') and is now kept in Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery (Acc. No. 1983.105). L. Allason-Jones published a note on the discovery of the eagle mount in the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Ant. & Arch. Soc., Vol. LXXXV (1985, 262f): "The mount consisted of a slightly convex, openwork disc which measures 66.5mm in diameter. The centre is filled with the figure of an eagle facing to its right and holding its wings out. It is perched on a stylized standard of 'Jupiter's thunderbolts', on top of a sphere. [...] Around the eagle a ring provides the base for the letters OPTIME MAXIME CON. These letters ae angular and separated from the ring and border by roughly shaped pellets. Apart from the 12th and 13th letters (E and C), the letters are widely spaced. [...][Parallels come from]...High Rochester, Silchester, York, Corbridge and Uley in Britain, and on the Continent they are known from Kastell Oberscheidenthal, Kastell Dambach, Zugmantel, Saalburg, Osterburken, Strasbourg and Lauriacum and a single piece has been found at Thamusida.[...]... Evidence from the German forts makes it clear that each of these mounts was part of a set worn on a military balteus or cross-strap. The circular mount was worn above a rectancular plate from which hung a triangular terminal. All three parts had openwork decoration and in the cases where the circular mounts are of the Carlisle type, the openwork takes the form of an inscription divided between the three elements: circular: OPTIME MAXIME CON(SERVA); rectangular: NUMERUM OMNIUM; triangular: MILITANTIUM; i.e. BEst (and) Greatest protect (us) a tropp of fighting men all. 'Best and Greatest' is an allusion to Jupiter, traditionally the god of the Empire and the army.[...]"
Title: Centre piece of Roman Jupiter mount
Credit: https://finds.org.uk/database/ajax/download/id/153332 Catalog: https://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/153332/recordtype/artefacts archive copy Artefact: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/195405
Author: Lancashire County Council, Dot Boughton, 2007-10-12 12:44:17
Permission: Attribution-ShareAlike License version 4.0 (verified 2 December 2020)
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Attribution Required?: Yes