A Celebration of Earth: Exploration of the Elements in 2025
Between 2024-2027, The Vindolanda Trust is exploring the elements through our events and activity programme. In 2025, we are celebrating the Earth, with a special focus on both the Roman relationship to the land and our own contemporary research into the impact of climate change on archaeology.
Roman myth tells us that before the world as we know it, there was Chaos—a formless and unordered state. From this chaos, two gods were born: Terra or Tellus (Earth) and Caelus (Sky). Their union marked the creation of the physical world, from which all other gods and life emerged. Terra Mater, or Mother Earth, represents solid ground and all that grows from it, meaning she is deeply connected to the cycle of nature.

In Roman beliefs, Terra was known as the goddess of nature, marriage, fertility, and the Earth itself. One commemoration of this was the ancient Roman festival of Fordicidia, celebrated on the Ides of April. Festivals in April were often dedicated to female or ambiguous deities, as well as agriculture, farming, and animal husbandry. William Warde Fowler claimed Fordicidia was ‘beyond doubt one of the oldest sacrificial rites in Roman religion’. Late Republican scholar Varro explains the festival as,
“The Fordicidia was named from fordae cows; a forda cow is one that is carrying an unborn calf; because on this day several pregnant cows are officially and publicly sacrificed in the curiae, the festival was called the Fordicidia from fordae caedendae, ‘the pregnant cows which were to be slaughtered.“
The festival of Fordicidia and its rituals also involved the Vestals. After the pregnant cow had been sacrificed, the unborn calf was taken and burned by the senior Vestal. The ashes were then mixed with the dried blood of the ‘October’ horse to sprinkle on the bonfires of the Parilia. This was a festival performed on 21st April in acknowledgement of Pales, a deity of shepherds and sheep, for the purification of the shepherd and the sheep.
Terra was also honoured in the Ludi Saeculares, or Secular Games in 17 BC by the first Emperor Augustus. It was at these games that the pregnant sow was sacrificed, much like the rituals of Fordicidia. These games were held at intervals of roughly 110 years in 88AD and 204AD, as well as 47AD by Claudius to celebrate Rome’s 800-year anniversary, followed by a cycle in 147AD and 248AD.
There are not many surviving inscriptions of Terra but epitaphs during the Imperial period sometimes reference her, and there are votive inscriptions recorded in Ljubija to Terra Mater dated 21st April, linking back to the festival of Parilia. Other examples of Terra include a temple dedicated to her on the Esquiline Hill and representation on Augustus’s breastplate commemorating the victory over the Parthians in 20 BC. Terra is often depicted in Roman art as a woman half submerged in the Earth, adorned with plants, animals and cornucopia.
Our 2025 Event Programme will encourage you to learn more about how the Roman’s interacted with the land, from agriculture to woodcraft, medicine to zooarchaeology, and how The Vindolanda Trust is working to understand how the changing climate above ground is impacting the ancient archaeology below ground.
So, whether you’re participating in a hands-on workshop, viewing ancient artefacts, or simply enjoying the landscape of Magna Fort, join us in 2025 as we honour Terra.
Bibliography
Fowler, W.W. (1899). The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic.
Beard, M., North, J. and Price, S. (1998). Religions of Rome. 1 : A History. Cambridge University Press.
Tacitus, C. (1904). Cornelii Taciti Annalium libri XIII-XVI.
Galinsky, K. (1998). Augustan culture – an interpretive introduction.
