London in the Roman World. By Dominic Perring. 233mm. Pp xix + 573, 90 b/w figs, tabs. Oxford University Press, 2022. isbn 9870198789000. £40 (hbk).

Just as sculptors came from Gaul to work in Bath stone, surely it is possible that a Gaulish or Gaulish-trained bronze worker cast the Bath statue in situ. The remarkable images of deities generally published as being from the corners of the main altar, but with affinities to the Viergötterstein from the Rhineland, may well be part of some other monument, as Cousins suggests, an idea first proposed, I think, by our late Fellow, Tom Blagg. Other sculptures are equated with local dedications from other places in the Cotswold region of south-west Britain. Dedications to the Suleviae at both Bath and Chichester by a sculptor called Sulinus and the identical style and epigraphy inscribed on tablets by one Docili(a)nus at both Bath and Uley reveal not only an individual intent on bothering the gods, but connectivity and pilgrimage within the province and, indeed, beyond, as is implied by Solinus’s mention of what can only be coal being burnt on the altar of Minerva’s temple at Bath. While there is somuch to admire in Cousins’s work, Davenport gains in his descriptions of the actual archaeology of the structures as well as in fairly lavish use of colour. He inevitably builds on Barry Cunliffe’s Roman Bath Discovered published twenty years ago (Cunliffe ), but more has been discovered since and of particular importance is a raft of masonry to the east of the temple court, which he interprets as a theatre on the same magnificent scale as the baths. It will require a chance to excavate in the area of the putative cavea to prove it. If so, either the blocks identified as from a tholos will have to have been sited elsewhere, or they were, indeed, part of the ornamentation of the theatre. Also of great interest has been the excavation of houses; whether or not Bath is best described as a sanctuary, it developed urban features, including houses with mosaic floors. Of especial interest is the very rare discovery bust of a woman, unfortunately now headless, carved in local stone and found in a second-century house excavated in Hat and Feather Yard; it presumably came from a house shrine and is indicative of the Romanitas of the owner. The sanctuary certainly required many people to service it, and that meant dwelling places, guest houses, shops and cemeteries for the dead – and beyond the urban area Bath was ringed by suburban villas. Many exciting discoveries have been made in Bath, including the enormous Beau Street hoard of coins deposited in the late third century and never recovered. In short, both of these books are to be warmly commended as valuable contributions not just to the study of Roman Britain but to Classical archaeology in general.