XXVII. Description of a Roman Altar found in the neighbourhood of Aldston Moor, in Cumberland: in a Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, K.T. President of the Society of Antiquaries, &c. &c. by the Rev. Stephen Weston, B.D. F.R.S. and S.A.

Abstract

I beg leave to offer to your Lordship and the Society a Description of a Roman Altar lately dug up in the neighbourhood of Aldston Moor, in Cumberland, near a military road, and not far from a great Roman station. The altar is three feet high, sixteen inches wide, and eight thick. It is divided into three compartments, the capital, the square or plane, and the base. On the top is an oval cavity one inch and a half deep, and about nine over by six, in which the wine, the frankincense, and the fire were placed, and was called Thuribulum, the censer, or the focus; but this hole is not on all the Roman altars found in Great Britain. On the sides however of the one I am describing are two bass-reliefs, representing on one part the infant Hercules strangling two serpents (as he is seen on a silver coin of Croton in Italy), and on the other the god in all his strength about to combat the serpent in the garden of the Hesperides (as he appears on a coin of Geta struck at Pergamus).