Why I Love… This Romantic Roman Brooch

When you’re dealing with short inscriptions like this, precise translations tend to be slightly dodgy, but essentially it means, “if you’re in love with me, I’m more in love with you”. It immediately evokes the past in such an intimate way and makes you start asking questions about who owned it and who used it.

This brooch dates from the late 1st century. It would have been worn by someone at Richborough towards the end of its time as a military fort when it was growing into a thriving port town. Brooches were very functional objects; they were used by everyone, every day, to hold their clothes together, but we know that this one had more meaning than that. It’s personal, and it was obviously a gift of some kind.

One thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t made in England. It came from the continent, likely from Sicily, which implies that possibly the person that owned the brooch, or the person who gifted the brooch, may have done so as well. Which is amazing if you think about it; it gives this sense of people traveling long distances through the Roman world to get to this site, which was the gateway to Britain at the time. The Roman world was very, very cosmopolitan and, although we were on the edge of it, there was still constant movement to and from Britain.

That’s something that you see in other objects from the site; there are a considerable number of pieces coming in from all over the Empire – from France, Germany, Egypt, and from Italy itself. This brooch is special, but also normal, and that's kind of nice. It’s nice to think that this was an ordinary thing that was happening. It also shows the movement of people in the Roman empire on a very personal level: it isn’t just big trade routes, it’s real people living their lives and moving around.