It has been suggested by Mr. O’Callaghan[395] that the animal represented on the monument is a hare, and that it was selected as an emblem characteristic of the watchfulness of the profession to which ANICIUS INGENUUS belonged. In his admirable work on the Roman Wall, the Rev. Mr. Bruce describes, more correctly, the figure to be that of a rabbit; and he further conjectures that it had some reference to the worship of Priapus. The whole device is, in all probability, far more simple in its signification. The _cuniculus_, or rabbit, when found on ancient Roman monuments and coins, is generally held by archæologists and numismatists as the recognised emblem of Spain,[396] as, for example, on the coins of Sextus Pompey and Galba; and the circular bucklers or cetræ which are placed on this tablet, on either side of the animal, are equally strong characteristics of the same country. Indeed, there can be little or no doubt that these devices indicate merely that this young military physician was of Spanish birth and origin. Several monumental and votive tablets have been discovered in other parts of the old Roman world, affording further evidence of the Roman troops being provided with a medical staff. In Gruter’s great work on Roman inscriptions there are copies of at least three inscriptions, in which physicians of Cohorts (_medici cohortum_) are mentioned.[397] One of these inscriptions (p. 219, 3) bears the name of a physician who had the same _nomen gentilicium_ as the medical officer of the Tungrian Cohort who died at Housesteads—viz., “M. JULIUS INGENUUS MEDIC. COH. II. VIG.” The tablet, which was found at Rome, contains a votive imperial inscription from twelve or thirteen persons, and among others, from the physician to the second “Cohors Vigilum.” Another of the inscriptions of Gruter is specially interesting in relation to its date, for it was cut at the commencement of the reign of Domitian,[398] and in the year of the consulship of F. Flavius Sabinus, which year chronologists know to have been the eighty-third of the Christian era. We are, consequently, afforded evidence by this inscription that before the end of the first century, at least—however much earlier—medical officers were appointed to the Cohorts of the Roman army. The inscription itself is upon an altar or votive tablet, dedicated by SEXTUS TITUS ALEXANDER, physician of the fifth Prætorian Cohort, to Æsculapius, and the safety of his fellow-soldiers. A copy of this altar and its inscription is given in the accompanying plate, Fig. 2. The stone seems to have been found at Rome. Another altar, discovered also at Rome, and inscribed in the same terms to Æsculapius, is given by Gruter (p. 68, 2). In this instance, the dedicator is SEXTUS TITIUS, medical officer to the sixth Prætorian Cohort; and he erects it for the health of the fellow-soldiers of his Cohort, in conformity with a vow which he had undertaken. The whole inscription is as follows:—