Volume 1

The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/332 page 13
    High Wycombe. [1817, Part II., p. 551.] A Roman mosaic pavement, of considerable extent, and in fine preservation, has been discovered in the garden of J. Matthie, Esq., of High Wycombe, 3 feet below the surface. Langley, the historian of the Hundred of Desborough, mentions a similar discovery as having been made in the grounds of the Earl of Shelburne, in the same vicinity, about sixty years since. [Also reported in 1829, Part I., p. 546.] Cambridgeshire. Cambridge. [1813, Part /., pp. 524, 525.] I send you a few particulars respecting two interesting fragments of antiquity, discovered in the vicinity of Cambridge. (Figs. 6, 7.) In the month of October last my attention was excited by an oblong stone, projecting from a bank near the highroad between Cambridge and Huntingdon, nearly three miles from the former town. On investigation, it proved to be the mutilated remnant of a Roman monument, partly covered with large but rude and irregular characters, which are considerably injured by the corroding effects of the atmosphere. Some of the letters, particularly in the third line, which is not so deeply relieved as the rest, are almost illegible. The substance of the stone is a marine aggregate in a calcareous matrix; and it weighs probably 2 cwt. Its form is cylindrical, and its dimensions are, 33 inches in length by 12^ in diameter. The following is an accurate transcript of the inscription; the characters of which, with the assistance of Mr. Harding, of Pembroke College, I partly succeeded in restoring : u IMP. CAES. FLAVI. COIlStANTINO V. LEG. CONSTANTINO. PIO. NOB. CAEL” Professor Clarke, of this University, to whose inspection I sub- mitted the monument, politely undertook to decipher the imperfect characters; and ascertained that it was erected in the reign of the Emperor Constantine, by the fifth legion, and dedicated to his son, Constantinus Pius, to whom many memorials of this nature were inscribed in various parts of the Roman empire.* On referring to Lyson’s “ Britannia,” I observe that the present highway from Cambridge to Huntingdon is of Roman origin, having been the line of communication between Durolipons and Granta, which were both important military stations under the Caesars. The monument may therefore have been simply commemorative of some local incident of trivial moment, perhaps of the formation or * Griiter’s “ Roman Antiquities.”
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