This curious medicine-stamp was found, in 1808, by a person ploughing in a field near the Roman wall at Wroxeter (the ancient Uriconium), Shropshire. It was first figured and very briefly noticed by Mr. Parkes in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1810, p. 617. “Several (observes Mr. Parkes) have attempted to decipher the legend, but no one has as yet been able to give a satisfactory reading.” Mr. Nightingale (1813), in his account of Shropshire in the _Beauties of England and Wales_[550] mentions the stamp; and Mr. Hartshorne in his _Salopia Antiqua_[551] (1841), has given an embellished and consequently less accurate copy of the inscription than that originally published by Mr. Parkes. Mr. Hartshorne describes it as “an amuletal seal,” and adds, “it has hitherto baffled the endeavours of those who have attempted to explain it.” Lastly, Mr. Albert Way has lately correctly published it as a specimen of a Roman medicine-stamp, and has interpreted the second and fifth lines, leaving the others still undetermined. But the whole appears capable of being deciphered. The inscription runs thus:— IBCLM DIA LBA AD OM NE Δ VN O EX O J (_ulii?_) B (_assi?_) CL_e_M_entis_ DIAL_i_BA_num_ AD OMNEM Διαθεσιν (Diathesin) VNO EX O_vo_.—_The Dialibanum or Incense collyrium of Julius Bassus Clemens, for every eye-disease; to be used mixed with an egg._ The name of the practitioner or proprietor, given in the first line of the seal, offers the principal difficulty in reading the inscription. But the CLM is in all probability a contraction, as I have ventured to interpret it, for CLEMENS,—a common cognomen or family name among the Romans. The B as an initial could stand for any of the various gens names which begin with this letter, as Balbus, Betutius, etc. I have conjecturally given it as _Bassus_, principally because on an old monumental tablet, discovered at Leyden,[552] the cognomen of CLEMENS is preceded by the nomen gentilicium of BASSUS,—showing the combination in question not to have been unknown among the Roman colonists formerly scattered over Western Europe. Besides, _Bassus_ was a name by no means unknown in ancient Roman medical literature and practice. When mentioning, in the preface to his first Book, the more distinguished disciples and followers of Asclepiades, Dioscorides places, as the foremost in his enumeration, _Julius Bassus_. Galen (_De Simpl. Medicam. Facult._ lib. i. cap. 7) and Cælius Aurelianus (_Contra Hereses_—Preface to lib. i.) both cite the practice and authority of _Bassus_; and Pliny, in his _Index Auctorum_, mentions that this physician wrote in Greek, although he was by birth a Roman.[553] The nature and composition of the Collyrium _Dialibanum_ we have already had occasion to consider under a former head. (See Stamp No. VI., p. 253.)