SECTION X.
STAMP NO. IX.—FOUND AT WROXETER.
This seal is remarkable both from its inscription, and from its round form. In this last respect it is, I believe, as yet unique,—no other specimen of a medicine-stamp of the same circular figure having, as far as I know, been hitherto described. The stone is about seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, and a quarter of an inch thick. Its form and inscription are seen in Plate III. No. IX., where the upper figure shows the stamp presenting the usual incuse and reversed inscription; and the second or lower figure shows the impression left by the stamp upon wax.[549]
ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS.
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?) CLeMentis DIALiBAnum AD OMNEM Διαθεσιν (Diathesin) VNO EX Ovo.—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.])
I have also formerly shown that the Greek term Διαθεσις was used as a general term for eye-disease (see p. [241]); and no doubt its initial letter Δ stands in the present inscription under this signification.
Many of the ancient collyria were, like the Dialibanum, preserved and sold in a firm or solid form, and were directed to be dissolved or mixed with the white of one or more eggs at the time when they were required for application to the eye.[554] Hence the expression, UNO “EX OVO,” in this and other stamp legends.
This stamp, like some others, has a rude figure of a plant engraved along with the inscription. The trunk of the plant is given at the commencement of the third line by Mr. Hartshorne as an I—thus unnecessarily confusing the reading of the legend.