Roman soldier's altar found near in Manchester

[Theres]

this is cool...

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1044666_roman_soldiers_gift_found

so, who knows something more about these two rather obscure goddesses?

[Halstrom]

I did a search for both goddesses, and I could only find blogs that mention the goddess Hananeftis, however a search for Ollototis gave me one link that gave me some information. Here is the link: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/gods_o/ollototis.html

[Brigid Rowan]

Thats super cool! I dont know anything about the Goddesses though...I'll dig around, see what I can discover..

[electricpeppers]

Very interesting.

[David19]

That is very cool and very interesting, it's good to see how dedicated he was to his Gods too, and I also think it can give us insight into his psyche (and maybe the psyches of other Roman soldiers at the time).



I did a search for both goddesses, and I could only find blogs that mention the goddess Hananeftis, however a search for Ollototis gave me one link that gave me some information. Here is the link: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/gods_o/ollototis.html

Thanks for that link, it was quite short, but interesting. I haven't heard of these 2 Gods before, but maybe there isn't anything that survived or maybe they were 2 Gods of a family or an individual, so maybe there wouldn't have been known outside his family or something (I don't know too much about the Roman religion, although I want to learn more, so I don't know how common that would've been?).

[Theres]

yeah, it is an interesting insight.
i remember a number of years back when they unearthed some papyri near Hadrian's Wall that turned out to be letters home from Roman soldiers stationed there. they really didn't sound much different from modern soldiers writing home... complaining about the weather and food, the lousy roads, wishing they were home, etc. it really helped put a face to them, and helped me realize how little real difference there was between us.

but i wouldn't automatically assume that this is necessarily an insight to Roman religion of the time. not all Roman soldiers were Roman. in fact most of them probably were not.
and some of these foriegn born legionairies rose through the ranks to positions of power, occasionally even Emperor. Trajan for example. he was Spanish-born, but rose to the rank of General, and eventually ruled very efficiently as Emperor for nearly 20 years.