[399] Syntagma Inscriptionum Antiquarum (1682), p. 611, 7. See also Spon’s Miscellanea Eruditæ Antiquitatis, 145, 16; and Dr. Middleton’s Dissertation “De Medicorum apud veteres Romanos conditione,” in his Works, vol. iv. p. 103.
[400] Novus Thesaurus Vet. Inscriptionum, 1046, 5.
[401] In the text I have given the reading of this puzzling inscription suggested by Hultmann, in his Miscellanea Epigraphi, p. 415, the letters referring to the corps to which Sporus was attached being very indistinct—namely, “Medico alar indianae etheriae astorum.” The inscription, if Hultmann’s suggestion be correct, indicates the third wing or cohort of the Asturian or Spanish auxiliaries. The first and second wings of the Astures (Astorum), and the first cohort of them, are mentioned in the celebrated “Notitia imperii” as located at the time at which that army-list was made out, at three different military stations along the line of Hadrian’s wall from the Tyne to the Solway; and various inscriptions raised by these troops have been dug up in Northumberland and Cumberland. See Dr. Bruce’s work, p. 47, 110 and 154. These English slabs all read Asturum, instead of the Astorum of the Notitia, and of the Italian inscription referred to in the text. Let me add that inscriptions referring to soldiers of the Ala Indiana or Indian wing of auxiliary horsemen, have also been found in England.—See an example in Mr. Akerman’s Archæological Index, p. 67, and Messrs Buckmann and Newmarch’s Corinium, p. 115.
[402] “In Legione sunt Cohortes decem.”—Cincius in Aulus Gellius, xvi. 4.
[403] Museum Veronense, p. 120, 4. See also Gruter’s Inscriptiones Romanæ, tom. i. p. 633, fig. 5. The exact age of the dead, not as to years only, but as to months, as in the above tablet, and sometimes even as to days, is a feature peculiar to Roman monumental inscriptions. And nothing appears to us more strange and interesting in relation to Roman monumental tablets, than their total or almost total silence as to a future state, and the possibility of meeting beyond the grave. Out of the almost innumerable Roman monumental inscriptions that have now been copied and published, not one, as far as I am aware, ventures to refer to the hope of a future life. They seem to have looked upon the idea of a future state of existence as poetical imagery only, and not reality; all doubting, like Tacitus, “si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnæ animæ.”—Vita Agricolæ, cap. 46.
[404] There is, at the end of the third line, an evident ellipsis of the word Uxoris. It is scarcely necessary to add that, as is well known, these old Roman inscriptions abound in errors of orthography and grammar.
[405] De Re Militari, lib. ii. cap. 10.
[406] Grævius’ Thesaurus, vol. x. p. 1021.
[407] Annal. lib. i. cap. 71.
[408] Scriptores Historiæ Romanæ, tom. ii. p. 355.