A Cock and Bulla Story

A bulla (pl. bullae)  is a globular necklace worn by young boys. The alternative Latin meaning ‘bubble’ is a good indicator of its general bulbous shape. There is strong evidence for the bulla being used throughout the Republican period, particularly in Italy. Although it examples and depictions are known from the Imperial period it is sometimes argued to have declined in use in the 1^st century AD (Cleland et al. 2007, 26; Croom 2000, 71). Its depiction on a third century AD sarcophagus in Györköny, Hungary suggest continued use. The bulla was hollow and may be made from gold, silver, bronze or leather; there is some evidence to suggest that the more expensive materials are explicitly associated with high status individuals. For example, a cremation burial from Aix-en-Provence (Péchoux 2010, 37, no. 19) from a family mausoleum included a porphyry cinerary urn, a gold bulla, two gold rings with emerald settings (pourvus d’émeraude), and an indeterminate amount of coinage – by anyone’s criteria that is an expensive burial in the north-western provinces! There is little more convincing evidence of an association between bulla and the elite than through its depiction on a statue of the infant Emperor Nero from the early 1^st Century AD (in the Louvre, MR 337). The focus in modern literature is certainly on the examples in gold and silver – the high status examples.

Bullae are worn by boys from a very young age. Terracotta votives from 4^th-1^st Century BC Paestum show swaddled infants wearing bullae (Ammerman 2007). It has been suggested that the bulla was worn by boys until the end of puberty, between age 14 and 17, whereupon the pendant was offered to the family Lares and the young man officially entered adulthood (Cleland et al. 2007, 26; Dasen 2015, 195).

FIG 1: Sculpture from the tomb of a Roman boy, depicting him wearing a bulla over his tunic. © FrenchAvatar via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY Attribution 3.0]

Plutarch (Quaes. Rom. 101) discusses bullae directly and raises at least three motives for the use of the pendant: in commemoration of Tarquin who was awarded one by his father for valour in battle; to identify free-born male youths when nude to prevent amorous advances; as a ‘badge’ of childhood. The reality may have been a combination of all three (see also references to bullae in Pliny (Nat. Hist. 33.4), Suetonius (Jul. 84) and Livy (26.36)).

Where am I going with all this? Well I hoped to introduce a rather conflicting piece of evidence to balance this overwhelming association between bullae and young men. As one of my supervisors recently asked in a discussion of this “When is a bulla not a bulla?”.

My PhD focus is Roman Britain. I’m open and honest about my data gathering – I haven’t done it yet – so I’m unclear how many, if any there are from secure archaeological provenance here in Britain. The exception to this is one silver bulla in the Yorkshire Museum. This comes from a Late Roman inhumation grave, forming part of the extensive and high-quality jewellery assemblage accompanying the so-called ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’. This woman has been shown to have been of North-African descent (Leach et al. 2010), to have died age 18-23 and to have had a grave that included amber earrings, a fine blue-glass vessel, a glass mirror, jet bangles, African-ivory bangles, and an ivory inscription plaque. To complicate matters of interpretation, the inscription plaque is an early Christian dedication (SOROR AVE VIVAS IN DEO) in an inhumation which is, otherwise, visually ‘pagan’. In this one example, the use of the bulla (albeit in silver rather than gold) is associated not with a young male but with a young adult female. This specific bulla is at least not without comparison in form and material in the NW provinces: a 2^nd century example from Toulon.

FIG 2: Silver bulla from the grave of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’, York. YORYM : H6 ©York Museums Trust (Yorkshire Museum) [CC BY SA 4.0]

FIG 3: The skull and material assemblage from the grave of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’

Péchoux (2010, 35-37) catalogued 24 bullae from the area of Roman Gaul and noted their occurrence in gold, silver and bronze, and from inhumations and sarcophagi as well as other localities, such as a house and a kiln. They were frequently associated with funerary deposits; other associated grave goods from the catalogue include a mirror, brooches, ‘an ivory object’, ceramic(?) vessels, amber animal figurines and an antler roundel. The range of ancillary materials represented in Gaul correlates interestingly with the other grave goods of the Ivory Bangle Lady: a mirror, amber, ivory.

Perhaps the best piece of evidence which securely relates the bulla to female jewellery is the existence of ‘bulla earrings’ (for example, a 2^nd Century AD gold pair in the British Museum) . They are clearly worn in a different way and, as such, would be devoid of the intrinsic social cues which are otherwise associated with bullae. Perhaps the earrings are simply globular gold discs, high-status and aesthetically pleasing and the association is a modern retrojection? It is difficult, though, not to draw comparisons and to consider that the same visual comparison may be drawn in antiquity. Thinking outside of the box – perhaps they are a pair of gold bullae proper which have been re-purposed for use? The link that such a thing would provide to a family’s history and continuity cannot be unimportant. Bullae are closely related to life-course changes (from boys to men) and this may be seen as an important time for parents as well as children; a momento or a token of this change does not seem beyond the realms of possibility.

Returning to the silver bulla-shaped pendant in a Late Roman female inhumation. How can this unusual use of a bullae be rationalised in terms of the wider data set? At present there are no obvious explanations that present themselves, so I shall instead continue to speculate. We know of (usually) silver lunulae worn by women and young girls around the Empire; perhaps the joining of material and image could be an attempt at combining the protective qualities of each and this pendant served a similar function. Even if this is a ‘true’ male bulla in a female inhumation grave, it does not reflect the use of such an object in life. It certainly raises questions – Is this indicative of a male presence, such as a son or younger brother, outside of her grave? How ‘late’ is this Late Roman grave (if 4^th century, this may reflect a change in use)? Is there anything inside the pendant? There are, equally, broader questions: Other than ‘tradition’, why are women not depicted with bullae? Does the protection offered still work? Is this shape of pendant always used as an indicator of identity and social status?

FIG. 4. Pair of Gold Bulla earrings in the British Museum ©Trustees of the British Museum [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

Addendum

Thanks to both Michael Marshall (Museum of London) and Glynn Davis (Colchester Museums) mainly for just reading the original version of this blog, but also for sending me references to two relevant bullae from two very different Romano-British contexts. The first is a copper-alloy bulla which may have strung on a silver chain, found in a hoard of military awards and jewellery from Colchester and, interestingly, associated with Boudiccan period destruction; 1st Century and comparable with the ‘traditional’ use of bullae in the Roman world (Crummy 2016). It is now on display in Colchester Castle.

The second is an inhumation of a mature female, dated AD 140-250. At the neck she wore a twisted copper alloy torc/neck ring upon which hung a copper alloy bulla (Watson 2003). Its not as late as Ivory Bangle Lady, but provides another excellent piece of evidence for an association with women and bullae. The neck ring shows also that this example would have been worn tight against the body, close to the neck rather than dangling towards the chest (as on infant bullae) in a manner much more comparable with how lunulae are shown to be worn.

Bibliography

Ancient Sources

Livy, History of Rome. Trans. Moore, F. G. 1943. Livy. Books XXVI-XXVII with an English Translation. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann. [Available http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi0914.phi00126]

Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Trans. Bostock, J. [Available http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+toc%5D

Suetonius, Divi Julius. Trans. Reed, J. E and Thomson, A. (eds) 1889. Suetonius: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars; An English Translation, Augmented with the Biographies of Contemporary Statesment, Orators, poets, and Other Associates. Philadelphia, Gebbie & Co. [Available http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi1348.abo011]

Modern Sources

Ammerman, R. M. 2007. “Children at Risk: Votive Terracottas and the Welfare of Infants at Paestum”, Hesperia Supplements 41 (Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy). The American School of Classical Studies at Athens. 131-151.

Cleland, L., Davies, F., and Llewellyn-Jones, L. 2007. Greek and Roman Dress from A to Z. London and New York, Routledge.

Croom, A. T. 2000. Roman Clothing and Fashion. Stroud, Tempus.

Crummy, N. 2016. “A Hoard of Military Awards, Jewellery and Coins from Colchester”, Britannia 47.

Leach, S., Eckardt, H., Chenery, C., Müldner, and Lewis, M. 2010. “A Lady of York: Migration, Ethnicity and Identity in Roman Britain”, Antiquity 84. 131-145.

Péchoux, L. 2010. “De l’enfance á l’âge adulte: recherche de preuves matérielle de rites de passage en Gaule romaine”. In Hameua, P. (ed) Les rites de passage, del la Grèce d’Homére à notre XXIe siècle. Isère. 25-38.

Ubi Erat Lupa (UEL) – http://www.ubi-erat-lupa.org/

Watson, S. 2003. An Excavation in the Western Cemetery of Roman London: Atlantic House, City of London  (MOLAS Archaeology Studies Series 7). London, Museum of London Archaeology Service.