SECTION III.
STAMP NO. II.—CONTAINED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
This large stamp consists (Plate I., No. II.[460]) of a flat quadrilateral stone, about an inch and a half broad, and engraved upon three of its sides. A portion of one corner of the stone is broken off. The probable deficiency which is thus produced in one of the inscriptions is supplied in this, and in some other similar instances in the sequel, by Italic letters. The three inscriptions read as follow:—
1. SEX: JUL: SEDATI
CROCOD PACCIAN
2. SEX: JUL: SEDATI CRO-
CODES DIALEPIDOS
3. (Sex): JUL: SEDATI CRO-
(cod)ES AD DIATHES
The name of the oculist—Sextus Julius Sedatus—is imperfect on the third or broken side, the prænomen “SEX” being wanting on that side in the first line, and the middle syllable “COD” of the word Crocodes being also wanting, from the same cause, in the second line.
The restored reading of this third side—viz., sexti julii sedati crocodes ad diatheses—need not be dwelt upon, as it is so very similar to that on one side of the Tranent stone. The other two sides contain the names of two new varieties of crocodes.
One of these varieties—the CROCODES PACCIANUM—received its name from Paccius, a celebrated Roman medical practitioner, who either invented this special collyrium, or brought it into repute. Paccius, who lived about the commencement of the Christian era, is said to have amassed a fortune by the sale of a secret nostrum. At his death he bequeathed the prescription for it to the Emperor Tiberius, who placed a copy of it in the various public libraries.[461] In the list of his ophthalmic medicines, Galen gives formulæ for various collyria invented by Paccius, such as the “Sphragis Paccii,”[462] “Asclepiadeum Paccii,”[463] “Collyrium ex terra Samia Paccii Ophthalmici ad affectus intensos (επιτεταμενας διαθεσεις).”[464] Galen does not give any recipe for the Crocodes of Paccius; but it was evidently a collyrium duly esteemed at the time in which he wrote; for, in his chapter on ulcers of the eyes, he specially names the “CROCODES PACCIANUM,”[465] and recommends its use in cases in which the accompanying inflammation has already ceased, and at the stage when a stimulating application becomes necessary.
The other variety of crocodes used by Sedatus is the CROCODES DIALEPIDOS. A formula for Dialepidos is given by Marcellus,[466] with the crocus as the first ingredient mentioned in its composition. The Dialepidos derived its name from its containing the scales—(λεπιδες) of burnt copper, or the black peroxide of that metal,—a preparation which Dioscorides (lib. v. cap. 89) describes as useful in eye-diseases; and which Galen declares to be a “medicamentum multo utilissimum,” vol. xii. p. 223.