110 Inscpjbed Roman Stones of Dumfriesshire. 



it is often impossible to decide how the words are to be taken. 

 Next there is the name of the person or persons who erected the 

 statue or tablet, with some information regarding them, the name 

 usually standing in the nominative to fecit, posicit, or other verb of 

 kindred meaning, frequently not expressed. A simple legionary 

 tablet bears only the name and the title of a legion. 



3. Sepulchral Stones. — Inscriptions on these generally 

 commence with the words, Z>//i- Manilnis,ov a contraction of them, 

 in the dative governed by sacrum^ often omitted. Then follows 

 the name of the deceased person, with his age and other particulars, 

 more or less full, generally in the nominative, as being the subject 

 of a verb {vixit or situs est) expressed or understood ; but it is some- 

 times put in the genitive, dependent on Diis Manibiis^ or in the 

 dative, as in No. 9, and made the indirect object of a verb, the 

 subject of which is the name of the person who caused the stone 

 to be erected. The relation of this person to the deceased, or 

 other particulars, are often added to the name. 



Of the stones to be here noticed the altars are the most 

 numerous and, with one exception, the most important. In form 

 a Roman altar was an adaptation of a pedestal, and consisted 

 of a moulded base, a central portion, and a capital, on the top 

 of which the gift was laid or the offering burnt. This top might 

 be simply a flat space, or it might have ridges along its front and 

 back edges, which became cushion-like rolls or volutes at the two 

 sides, so as to leave an enclosed space. This is the case in No. 10. 

 In most of the Birrens altars, however, there is a different 

 arrangement. Between the volutes there rises a projection with a 

 bason-shaped sinking, which, in some cases, takes the shape of a 

 patera. All these hollows, of whatever character, are generally 

 termed /^r/, or " hearths," as if intended for the fire of the burnt- 

 offerings ; " but," remarks Professor Baldwin Brown, " it has been 

 urged, with much show of reason, that when the sinking is bason- 

 shaped, as on the class of altars so largely represented at Birrens, 

 or is even fashioned into a stone patera, it is meant to receive 

 libations, or, at most, the blood of the victim, and not a fire to 

 consume the offering." * Usually an inscription fills the whole or 



* Structure and Ornamentation of the Birrens Altars, Proc. Soc. of 

 Antiq. ofSi-ollauil, vol. xxxi., pp. 169-178. 



