button to main menu  Gents Mag 1866 part 1 p.201

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Gentleman's Magazine 1866 part 1 p.201

  roman inscription
  Cockermouth Castle

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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