A similar question was asked a couple of years ago. I second u/QVCatullus in that I don't believe there are any Ancient Roman mentions that we know of currently. Not saying that there aren't any, but we presently don't know what they thought of it.

u/TheLadyMay and u/QVCatullus are correct in saying that no certain Roman-era reference to Stonehenge survives.

Antiquarians have sometimes claimed to see a reference to the site in the works of the Sicilian Greek writer Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the first century BC – before the arrival of the Romans, but at a time when Britain was nonetheless part of Europe's Iron Age trading network, not least thanks to its exports of Cornish tin. Diodorus draws on a lost account by one Hecataeus of Abdera dating back a further 300+ years to the 4th century BC, and perhaps on others, to note that the "Hyperboreans," in their northern island adjacent to Gaul, worshipped Apollo in a temple there. What excited the antiquarians was the description of the temple; Diodorus described it as "spherical," but some translators hazarded "circular" as a translation instead, seeing in this a reference to Stonehenge.

u/Tiako excerpted Diodorus's passage here a couple of years ago as follows:

Now for our part, since we have seen fit to make mention of the regions of Asia which lie to the north, we feel that it will not be foreign to our purpose to discuss the legendary accounts of the Hyperboreans. Of those who have written about the ancient myths, Hecataeus and certain others say that in the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and since it has an unusually temperate climate it produces two harvests each year. Moreover, the following legend is told concerning it: Leto was born on this island, and for that reason Apollo is honoured among them above all other gods; and the inhabitants are looked upon as priests of Apollo, after a manner, since daily they praise this god continuously in song and honour him exceedingly. And there is also on the island both a magnificent sacred precinct of Apollo and a notable temple which is adorned with many votive offerings and is spherical in shape. Furthermore, a city is there which is sacred to this god, and the majority of its inhabitants are players on the cithara; and these continually play on this instrument in the temple and sing hymns of praise to the god, glorifying his deeds.

It's very much a matter of speculation as to whether Diodorus and his predecessors were onto something here, and were muddling accounts of a circular temple and turning them into one that was spherical, or whether the passage refers to some other site entirely. But it's well worth pointing out that, even if the original report was of a circular temple, it might refer to a number of sites other than Stonehenge.

Anyway, for the Roman period, that's all we've got.

The earliest definite surviving reference to the stones can be found in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, dating to c.1130. In this work, Henry lists Stanenges (a word that etymologists inform us is derived from the Old English stan (stone) and hengen, hanging - perhaps from the resemblance of the trilithons to gallows) as the second of the four wonders of England. The first of these wonders is the great cave of Wookey Hole in the Mendips; the other two are natural phenomena, one being a wind that emerges from certain caves in the Peak District and the other an atmospheric phenomena of some sort. So by the Norman period at least, Stonehenge was recognised as a remarkable, and in many ways unparalleled, achievement.

It's also interesting to note that Henry describes the site straightforwardly, without the sort of accretion of myth we might expect:

"The second marvel is at Stonehenge, where stones of amazing bigness are raised in the manner of gateways, so that gateways appear erected over gateways; nor can any one find out by what contrivance stones so great have been raised to such a height, or for what reason they have been erected in that place."

For the first stages in the construction of a legendary Stonehenge, we need to turn to that well-known myth-maker Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae discusses the site as a monument to the ancient British history he was at such pains to construct.

"At Amesbury," Geoffrey Grigson summarises Monmouth's work,

the Saxon Hengist traitorously murdered an assembly of British notables. Later, when he had defeated the Saxons, the British king Aurelius Ambrosius determined to surround these noble dead with a monument. Merlin advised him to fetch from Mount Killaraus in Ireland a marvellous mystic and healing structure of stones which set, up again around the dead, would stand for ever. The stones were fetched, Merlin using his magic in dismantling them and re-erecting them. Within this Stanheng, this chorea gigantum [Giants’ Dance], Aurelius was buried, as well as Uther and Constantine.

So for Geoffrey of Monmouth, Stonehenge was a tomb, the burial site of Constantine, Arthur's successor as King of the Britons, and two of Constantine's sons: Uther and Aurelius Ambrosius.

Sources

Aubrey Birl, A Brief History of Stonehenge

Lewis Gidley, Stonehenge Viewed by the Light of Ancient History and Modern Observation [an 1873 work useful for the antiquarian perspective]

Samuel Ferguson, "On a passage in the 'Historia Angolorum' of Henry of Huntingdon relative to Stonehenge." Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 9 (1864-66)

Geoffrey Grigson, "Stonehenge and the imagination," History Today 1 (1951)

Follow up question: When would have the Romans have conquered the area around Stonehenge?

Hi, everyone,

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