Archaeology: This book has an attractive cover but inside the presentation is poor. The illustrations vary from bad to abysmal and personal names such as ORíodáin, Culfield, Corringwood-Bruce, Coewen, Wagner (Warner!) demonstrate the poor copy-editing which is, in fact, apparent from as early as the acknowledgments page, writes Barry Raftery.
Di Martino is concerned to produce an "independent and balanced history of the inter-relationship between Rome and Ireland" to the arrival of the Vikings. Reflected throughout the book is his desire to demonstrate how the "experts" have so often got it wrong. He seeks to expose the "official view" which has scarcely realised, even denied (not always, he hints, for academic reasons), that extensive romanisation of Ireland took place over the first six centuries AD. For him this denial was "an absurdity" and he now provides "new insights and shows the reality - that Ireland and Rome were not separate worlds".
His basic premise is quite untrue. Today no reputable scholar concerned with a study of the first millennium AD in Ireland questions the extensive romanisation which obviously took place in so many areas of material, intellectual, artistic and religious development. Roman influences were durable, over time influencing, and adapting to, new trends. Nor has the identification of some Roman burials in Ireland ever been in question and nobody doubts that individuals, or small groups, from the Roman world may have set foot on Irish soil.
Di Martino's fascination and enthusiasm for his subject is evident and in this he is to be commended. In the basic material presented, however, there is little that is new and, more seriously, his reasoning, and the manner in which he presents the evidence, are deeply flawed. In addition, the book is littered with inaccuracies, so many in fact that only a handful can be noted in this review.
He deals in his first chapter with the alleged, oft-discussed "invasion" of Ireland by Agricola around 82AD. He adds nothing new to the argument and his inclusion of two well-known burial sites, on Lambay and at "Loughey" in Co Down, is unfortunate for neither is Roman and the latter is almost certainly that of a woman. Inevitably he rehashes, with approval, the Drumanagh controversy and concludes by invoking "burials of soldiers wearing their Roman arms", and an "invasion fort". Here he borders on pure fantasy.
Even more fantastic is his second "invasion", which allegedly led to a Roman camp on the Rock of Cashel in Co Tipperary. Though based on little more than a few scattered scraps of 4th- or 5th-century pottery from the site, astonishingly we are told that it was one Nectarides who led a task force there from Cardiff, landing in Cork or Waterford in 364-367AD!
He does seek to bolster this southern Roman intrusion by considering several well-known southern finds, notably a silver hoard from Co Limerick (probably buried loot or a mercenary's pay), some ogham stones (for which there is no firm date) and especially the oft-discussed oculist's stamp from Golden, Co Tipperary. Concerning the last, however, recent examination of the find spot strongly suggests that the object was associated with a sacred well and had no military connotations.
There is much more which cannot be pursued here. Di Vittorio, for example, (without adverting to Stout's definitive 1997 work on the subject), holds the typical Irish ringfort (and much of the associated material culture) as part of his introduced late Roman horizon. Dating of this material is uncertain but the author invariably selects early dates in keeping with his Roman thesis.
Some of his assertions are especially eccentric. A furnace on the hillfort at Clogher, Co Tyrone, for example, is given as "the place where metalworking in Ireland began". This astonishing statement comes from a complete misreading of a statement in Celtic Britain and Ireland, 1995, by J. and L. Laing. He also got the page number wrong.
Even more extraordinary is his initial calculation that up to 40 million Roman coins might once have existed in Ireland "even with all possible caution and readjustments, an amazing figure and one that challenges all previous interpretations". His consideration of the great Iron Age wooden roadway at Corlea, Co Longford is similarly bizarre, a fact not helped by his seeming ignorance of any of the substantial publications on the subject. Though conscious of the road's second century BC dendrochronological dating, he nonetheless wonders, on the absurdest of grounds, whether there was "some ground for considering a possible Roman influence"! He also, inevitably, places considerable emphasis on suggestions, intriguing but wholly speculative, linking Neptune with the gold hoard from Broighter and Hercules with Iron Age Navan in Co Armagh.
There is much more that could be dealt with in a longer review. Enough has been written above, however, to indicate that, sadly, Roman Ireland is a deeply flawed work of inadequate scholarship. In the book the author writes "better a drop of evidence than a sea of imagination". Unfortunately it is the opposite which is here the case.
Barry Raftery is Professor of Celtic Archaeology at University College, Dublin. He was one of the organisers of the Venice exhibition, The Celts, in 1991 and is author of Pagan Celtic Ireland (Thames and Hudson, 1994)
Roman Ireland. By Vittorio Di Martino, Collins Press, 208pp, €15