The two inscriptions read as follows, when we separate the individual words composing them from each other:—
1. L VALLATINI EVODES AD CI-
CATRICESETASPRITUDIN
2. L VALLATINI APALOCRO-
CODES AD DIATHESIS.
Let us endeavour to interpret each of these inscriptions in detail, supplying the elisions and contractions which exist in almost all Roman inscriptions; but which are less in this seal than in most others.
1. L(ucii?) VALLATINI EVODES AD CICATRICES ET ASPeRITUDINes.—Lucius Vallatinus’ Evodes for cicatrices and granulations.
Several of the collyria derived, as I have already observed, their designation from some special physical character. The present instance is an example in point, the appellation Evodes (εὐώδες) being derived from the pleasant odour (εὐ, well, and ὄζω, I smell) of the composition. Marcellus, in his work De Medicamentis, specially praises the collyrium known under the name of Evodes; and that too in the class of eye-diseases mentioned on the Tranent seal. For, in his collection of remedies for removing ulcers, cicatrices, etc., of the eyes and eyelids, he recommends (to use his own words) “præcipue hoc quod quidam Diasmyrnon, nonnulli Evodes, quia boni odoris est, nominant.” And he directs the Evodes to be dissolved and diluted in water, and introduced into the eyes with a probe, or after inverting the eyelid, when it was used with the view of extenuating recent cicatrices of the eyes, and removing granulations of the eyelids,—“ex aqua autem ad cicatrices recentes extenuendas, et palpebrarum asperitudinem tollendam teri debet, et subjecto specillo aut inversa palpebra, oculis inseri.”[444]
Scribonius Largus had previously described, in nearly the same words, the collyrium,—“quod quidam εὐώδες vocant,” and its uses in recent cicatrices and granulations, etc. Both these authors give the same recipe for the composition of the Evodes,—viz. pompholyx, burnt copper, saffron, myrrh, hematites, opium, and other ingredients, rubbed down in Chian wine. Its agreeable odour was probably owing to a considerable quantity of spikenard being used in its composition.[445] Galen gives two other collyria, of a different composition, and for other affections, as known at his time under the same name of Evodes,—the one termed the “Evodes of Zosimus,” the other the “diasmyrnon Evodes of Syneros.”[446]
2. L. VALLATINI APALOCROCODES AD DIATHESIS.—L. Vallatinus' mild Crocodes for affections of the eyes.