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Gentleman's Magazine 1853 part 1 p.74
some years ago to build the Hill Head House, now occupied by
Mr. Ramshay.
In Mr. Potter's quarto tract on Aboglanna, printed in 1851,
is a restoration of the "Decuman Gate," in which he has
thrown arches over the gateway; and the truth of the vision
which, with learned and sagacious eye, he then imagined, has
been vindicated by his late discoveries. To one of the piers
of the gateway, 8 1/2 feet high, the projecting impost is
still attached, and the first stone of the arch rests
thereon. The voussoir is two feet long, and 15 inches thick
at the broad, and 11 1/2 at the narrow end. At the outside
of the southern tower of the gate, on the ground, was found
a broken slab. It appears to have fallen from its place, and
to have been fractured by a stone which had afterwards
fallen upon it - and which, indeed, was found lying upon it
still. This slab bears an inscription which may be thus
given (two or three of the letters being conjectural):-
SVBMO DIO IV
LIO LEG AVG PR
PR COH I AEL DC
CVI PRAEEST M
CL MENANDER
TRIB
Mr. Potter extends the inscription as follows:- "Sublimo Dio
Julio Legato Augusti Propraetori Cohors Prima AElia Dacorum
cui praeest Marcus Claudius Menender Tribunus." Julius
Severus, the noble Roman who he supposes to be here named,
was propraetor of Britain in the time of Hadrian, and was
recalled, as "the most courageous of his generals," to go
against the Jews. This was in 132 or 134 A.D.; and it may
safely be concluded that about that time was the gate
erected by Julius Severus, and the slab inserted in the wall
by the first AElian cohort of the Dacians, over whom
Menander was tribuune. Mr. Potter, however, does not ascribe
the formation of the camp to Hadrian. The gate now laid bare
is of a later and superior style of architecture to the camp
generally - more highly finished, the work of a more refined
age. The camp is of the time, Mr. Potter inclines to think,
of Agricola. The suburbium lay without the present
gate, and its ruins may still be traced with ease, although
covered with vegetation. Mr. Potter expects to find the
foundation of a similar gate on the opposite side of the
camp; and if so, the number of the gates would be six. Four
have been already described; one remains to be excavated;
the sixth or Praetorian gate was destroyed some time ago, to
form a barn. Of the four gates that have been exposed, only
one gateway has not been walled-up. Stones, it is
conjectured, were subsituted for soldiers. Mr. Potter's
interesting paper concludes with a few remarks on the rude
representations of a palm branch and sword, emblems of Peace
and War, which are engraven on the inscribed stone.
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