The Mildenhall Treasure: Late Roman Silver Plate from East Anglia

Seventy years after entering the collections of the British Museum, the Mildenhall Treasure has finally received the scholarly attention it so richly deserves. During the intervening period the Treasure, and especially the great Bacchic platter, has been much published and discussed in many excellent handbooks, not least that by the late Kenneth Painter, a leading authority on Roman silver, to whose memory this volume is rightly dedicated; published in 1977, the handbook was the best survey of the entire Treasure until now. Indeed, it is only through his work and that of others on comparable treasures found more recently, including the Thetford and Hoxne Treasures (like the Mildenhall Treasure, from East Anglia), the Kaiseraugst Treasure (Switzerland) and the ‘Seuso’ Treasure (probably from Hungary), that we can more fully situate the Mildenhall cache in its cultural and artistic context. Moreover, technical studies and high-resolution photography have advanced in quality considerably since the mid-20th century, as this splendid catalogue makes clear. Much of the mystery surrounding the Mildenhall silver originates in the obscure circumstances of its discovery during the Second World War. It was evidently unearthed by a ploughman, Donald Butcher, working for a local farmer, Sydney Ford. Ford retained the hoard in his house until a general practitioner, Hugh Fawcett, visited him in the spring of 1946 and realised the significance of the plate displayed on his sideboard, alerting the British Museum. Although Ford described the find-spot and drew a sketch map of the site, various conspiracy theories about the provenance of the silver have surfaced over the years, for instance that the silver had been found in North Africa and flown into Britain during the war, or that it had been dug up elsewhere in Britain. The first chapter, which includes a discussion of Roald Dahl’s involvement with the silver, reads rather like the scenario of a novel. The principal value of the volume is that its ten chapters, each dealing with a single vessel or group of vessels and other items (i.e. the spoons), carefully analyse each object with regard to its form, decoration and iconography and, as far as possible, date. Despite rumours, no coins are known to be associated with the plate, so dating has to rely on general techniques and comparison with plate from elsewhere. The most famous object is the unique Bacchic platter. This, and the two much smaller Bacchic plates, are evidently from the same workshop and most probably dated to the third quarter of the 4th century. They form the subject of two of the book’s chapters. The author has an eye for detail, describing each individual scene with immense precision. The description of each scene is accompanied by photographs and appropriate comparanda, bringing out details which most observers have previously overlooked. These three Bacchic pieces (and it should be noted that many other pieces in the Treasure include Bacchic imagery) raise questions not only about imagery but also of use. It can be agreed that the central roundel depicts Oceanus girt with dolphins, presiding over a marine thiasos in the register around him, although I do not think we should assume that the user would not