Neolithic Settlement

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tiompan T
tiompan Jun 5, 2013 22:55:22
Replying to Littlestone

Littlestone wrote:
You’re still missing the point. There is no doubt that Minerva was (among other things) a goddess of healing. The point however is that you must show us that the springs at Bath were actually dedicated to her in that role. So far you have not done so... (but we live in hope :-)

Meanwhile good night and sweet Minerva dreams.

No you have missed the point ,I have answered your original problem i.e. “...the bath themselves were dedicated to Minerva ,a healing deity .” which is hard to prove at best “.
Both points have been clearly shown to be correct . i..e the baths were dedicated to Suils Minerva and she was a healing deity
However I note how you have now changed the wording of the problem , inserting a "in that role ", Minerva would not be impressed .

This link does mention the dedication and was rejected http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulis
"At Bath, the Roman temple is dedicated to Sulis Minerva, as the primary deity of the temple spa."

E Evergreen Dazed
Evergreen Dazed Jun 6, 2013 11:38:02
Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:
However I note how you have now changed the wording of the problem , inserting a "in that role ", Minerva would not be impressed .
Tiompan, 'in that role' is implied by saying that the baths were dedicated to Minerva, a healing deity.

It is disingenuous to specifically mention 'a healing deity' and then claim you were not intending to mean the baths were dedicated to her in that role!

You seem to be attempting to persuade that you were explaining that the baths were dedicated to Minerva, but then adding 'a healing deity' as some sort of 'extra' and irrelevant information, regarding the specific point being discussed!

To claim you were making an intentional distinction like that is, as i'm certain you know, to admit your communication was quite poor, as it gives the strong impression you were attributing the dedication to Minerva in that specific role.

Finally, if you had included 'a healing deity' not as the specific, but simply in order to provide an extra snippet of information for us about Minerva, it seems very strange to only mention healing among many other possible choices!

So which was it?

L Littlestone
Littlestone Jun 6, 2013 13:23:46
Replying to tiompan

Your line here that, “...the bath themselves were dedicated to Minerva ,a healing deity .” is the problem (as ED has eloquently pointed out). It’s a fine distinction but an important one. We could equally say that such and such a church is dedicated to St. Francis who preached to birds... (you can fill in the rest yourself :-)

Your linking of Minerva to a healing deity implies (perhaps unintentionally as I said above) that the healing aspect of the deity was the primary reason for the springs being dedicated to her. Again we do not know that to be so, though that aspect/role/manifestation of the deity would no doubt have, among other manifestations, been worshiped there.