The employment of the collyrium PENICILLUM mixed with an egg (EX OVO) is often indicated upon the oculist-stamps; and in the ancient Roman authors it is a mode in which many of the collyria were directed to be prepared before they were applied to the diseased eye.
SECTION VIII.
STAMP NO. VII.—CONTAINED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
In his paper in the Archæologia (vol. ix.), Mr. Gough published a sketch and account of a medicine-stamp, inscribed on three of its sides, and remarkable in one or two respects. The sketch which he has given of it is copied into Plate II., No. VII. The stamp itself is preserved in the British Museum. It is thicker, and more rounded at the edges, than the generality of these flat medicine-stones.
After quoting the three inscriptions on its sides, Mr. Gough gives the following very brief and unsatisfactory account of the reading of this stamp. “From the inscriptions,” he observes, “we learn that the owner’s name was FL., or Flavius Secundus, and that his composition was made of Opobalsamum and Myrrh, and the white of eggs.”[535]
Mr. Gough pointed out that the third side of the stamp was engraved in letters of a rude and negligent form, and different in character from the inscriptions on the two other sides. But he failed in seeing that the remaining sides are both imperfect; and that the latter half of one of the inscriptions, and the first half of the other, are deficient, in consequence of the stone, which was at first much larger, having been broken or reduced in size, and subsequently again rubbed down and smoothed on two of its sides before one of these sides was cut with the rude lettering above alluded to. When these circumstances are attended to, the inscriptions on the three sides appear to stand as follows:—
1. LJULIVENISD .....
OPOBALSAMTU .....
2. ......ASMVRNESBIS
......MPETUEXOVO