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Roman Inscription,
Cockermouth Castle
Antiquarian Intelligence and Proceedings of Learned
Societies.
-- Quid tandem velat
Antiqua miscere novis?
Notes of the Month
Cockermouth Castle, Cumberland. - The Rev. Dr. Bruce
has brought before the Society of Antiquaries of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, an inscription upon a stone slab,
excavated last summer at Cockermouth Castle, which is
generally believed to be indebted for most of its material
to the ruins of Papcastle, once a strong Roman fortified
post, the original name of which has not been satisfactorily
ascertained. The upper part of the inscription, apparently
to the extent of three or four lines, is entirely wanting:
the first line of what remains is very defective, and a word
in the fourth has been so mutilated as to be rendered
almost, if not quite, illegible; but the most material part
is perfectly clear, and is as follows, with the exception
that some of the letters are combined or in ligature:
....G AVG. II....
NVM. FRISON
VM. ABALLAV
ENSIVM .....
. XIIII KAL ET XIII KAL
NOV. GOR. II. ET POMPEI.
COS. ET ATTICO ET PRETE
XTATO COS. V. S. L. M.
- numerus Frisonum Aballavensium ..... decimo quarto
Kalendis et decimo tertio Kalendis Novembris Gordiano
secundo et Pompeiano consulibus et Attico at Pretextato
consulibus votum solventes (or solverunt)
lubenter ,merito.
The G in the first line has probably formed part of LEG
(legatus); and it is equally probable the letters
indicated after AVG. were PR. PR. (propraetor)
followed by ET; the full sense being that some person of
official rank on some public occasion had dedicated, in
discharge of a vow to some deity or deities, a building, in
conjunction with a numerus of the Aballavensian
Frisiones, on the fourteenth and thriteenth calends
November, in the consulates of Gordian (second time consul)
and Pompeianus, and of Atticus and Pretextatus, answering to
A.D. 214, when Gordianus Pius was emperor.
list, The inscription enables us to understand that a body
of Frisiones had been qtred sufficiently long at a station
called Aballava to acquire the surname Aballavenses. This
Aballava is recorded in the Notitia among the
stations per lineam valli as being garrisoned, under
a praefect, by a numerus of Moors, called Aurelian.
But it is somewhat remark-
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