All that remains of a larger-than-life statue of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius once erected in Scotland is a lower right leg, Live Science reported. The gold-covered bronze foot and calf, known as the Milsington leg, was discovered in a bog in 1820, according to a Nov. 12 statement from National Museums Scotland. It is the only example of a monumental Roman emperor statue ever found in Scotland and was likely made around A.D. 140. Experts have reconstructed what the sculpture may have looked like, but they are still unsure why it was carefully taken apart more than 1,800 years ago.
Researchers once thought the bronze had been looted from York, the English city the Romans founded in A.D. 71 as Eboracum. As work on the Roman frontier advanced, it became clearer that equestrian statues were often set up in forts along the empire's border. Experts now believe the lower leg came from an equestrian statue of Antoninus Pius similar to the famous statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Antoninus Pius was emperor from A.D. 138 to 161, succeeding Hadrian, who had built a wall at the northern limit of Roman territory. To push farther, Antoninus Pius directed the imperial governor of Roman Britain to move north, invade southern Scotland, and build a second barrier, the Antonine Wall. After the emperor died, that wall was left undefended and the Romans retreated from Scotland. During that retreat, the museum said, they may have dismantled valuable statues they had set up.
An examination of the Milsington leg ahead of a new exhibition showed that the bronze had no cut marks, suggesting it was removed carefully and not "brutally hacked off." "This contrasts with examples of statues being deliberately destroyed after a battle, when an emperor's memory was condemned, or when they were chopped up for scrap," National Museums Scotland said. "This really turns on its head our understanding of Rome's second attempt at conquering Scotland," Fraser Hunter, the museum's principal curator of prehistoric art and Roman archaeology, said in the statement. "This was a big deal for the Emperor, something which was worth celebrating." Hunter also asked a simpler question: Where is the rest of the statue?
The Milsington leg, the Inveresk Mithras altars, and other Roman-period finds go on display beginning Nov. 14 in the exhibition "Roman Scotland: Life on the Edge of Empire" at the National Museum of Scotland. The verified object is a carefully detached, gold-covered bronze leg from around A.D. 140, now interpreted as part of an imperial equestrian monument in Scotland, not a trophy dragged up from York. The missing body of the statue is still missing.