The Ruins of the Roman City of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near ShrewsburyWright, Thomas
History
The Ruins of the Roman City of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury
Wright, Thomas
Romans -- England -- Wroxeter; Wroxeter (England) -- Antiquities, Roman
Many objects of a more miscellaneous character have also been found
during the present excavations; or have found their way into the Museum
from former discoveries. Among these are three artists’ pallettes, for
using colour; several weights, some marked with Roman numerals; a
steelyard; several keys; portions of iron chains; styli, for writing on
wax tablets; an iron trident, which may perhaps have been the head of a
staff of office or authority; one or two spear heads; a strigil for
scraping the skin in the sweating baths; a portion of an iron horse-shoe;
and two or three very nice statuettes in bronze. The most curious,
however, of these miscellaneous objects is a medicine stamp, intended to
mark packets or bottles of what, in modern times, would be called patent
medicines. A certain number of these Roman medicine stamps have been
found in Britain and on the Continent, and they are all, like this stamp
found at Wroxeter, for salves or washes for the eyes, diseases of the
eyes having been apparently very common among the inhabitants of the
western provinces of the Roman empire. The Wroxeter stamp, intended for
a collyrium or salve for the eyes called _dialebanum_ or _dialibanum_,
gives us in all probability the name of a physician resident in
Uriconium. The inscription may be read as follows, filling up the
abbreviations:—TIB_erii_ CL_audii_ M_edici_ DIALIBA_num_ AD OMNE VIT_ium_
O_culorum_ EX O_vo_, _i.e._, the dialebanum of Tiberius Claudius the
physician, for all complaints of the eyes, to be used with egg.
A few stones, with Roman inscriptions, chiefly of a sepulchral character,
have been dug up at Wroxeter in the course of accidental excavations.
Three of these were found in 1752, and are preserved in the library of
Shrewsbury School. The first inscription may be read thus:—
C. MANNIVS
C. F. POL . SECV
NDVS . POLLEN
MIL . LEG . XX
ANORV . LII
STIP . XXXI
BEN . LEG . PR
H . S . E.
intimating that it marked the grave of a soldier of the twentieth legion
(which was stationed at Chester, the Roman Deva) named Caius Mannius, of
the Pollian tribe. Another commemorated a soldier of the fourteenth
legion, and has been supposed to belong to a very early period, as that
legion was withdrawn from Britain before A.D. 68. It was the legion
which suffered so much in the war against Boadicea, and this soldier may
perhaps have been engaged in that war, although his having died in
Britain does not necessarily imply that the legion to which he had
belonged was there at the time, or indeed that it had ever been there,
unless we had some other reasons for supposing that it had been there.
His name was Marcus Petronius, the son of Lucius, of the Menenian tribe,
and the inscription may be read as follows:—
M. PETRONIVS
L. F. MEN
VIC . ANN
XXXVIII
MIL. LEG
XIIII . GEM
MILITAVIT
ANN. XVIII
SIGN . FVIT
H . S . E.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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