Step 3 of 7

To the Temple

Fig. 3. Maquette of the temple complex (above right) and the bathhouse (left) of Aquae Sulis in the Roman Baths Museum. [Wikimedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bath_thermes_maquette_site.jpg) — Fig. 3. Maquette of the temple complex (above right) and the bathhouse (left) of Aquae Sulis in the Roman Baths Museum. Wikimedia

It was widely understood that the goddess Sulis Minerva had the power to punish thieves. Even if the identity of the robbers was unknown, she could find them and exact revenge. Upon arrival at the temple grounds, Solinus would need to write a curse text on a piece of lead, for which he probably needed the help of priests and maybe a professional scribe. The professionals knew exactly how to address the goddess, and how to get requests to reach her.

With his inscribed tablet, Solinus would go to the sacred spring. The spring had been enclosed in a room with a high vaulted ceiling, which was only accessible through one narrow door. Eleri Cousins gives a nice impression of the temple space in her book The Sanctuary at Bath in the Roman Empire (Cambridge 2020). The atmosphere inside this room must have been mystifying, with the sound of bubbling water, and the heat and steam of the spring filling the space. The Romans believed they were very close to the supernatural there. The spring, coming from the depths of the earth, was seen as a sort of portal to the underworld through which it was believed the goddess could be reached. That is why Solinus, after folding his sheet of lead a number of times, threw it into the spring.