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messengers and officials; the provisions to be found for an 
Imperial Envoy ; or in case of the Emperor’s own passage, for 
himself and his suite; one item in the latter case being one 
pound by weight of oil of cloves for the Emperor’s bath. A 
temple was required as one of the buildings in the official 
hostelry, in which on the Imperial progress seven little pigs 
were to be sacrificed for the Monarch’s safe journey. 
In the light of Valentinian’s rescript for establishing farms 
everything becomes clear in a Villa like Witcomb, which 
situated in the midst of good pasturage and beautiful scenery, 
within a mile of the horsing station at Birdlip, or that for the 
“Cheval de renfort” at the foot of the hill, fulfils all the 
required conditions of such a farm, with its small suite of good 
apartments, and numerous rooms of a lower class for slaves or 
labourers. The temple at Witcomb, noticed by Lysons as if it 
corresponded to a chapel in one of our private mansions, is fully 
accounted for by the order just alluded to: while at Chedworth 
the pigs of iron indicate smith’s work connected with building 
or repair of carriages; and, probably horse-shoeing. He 
touched upon this as a disputed point, but mentioned recent 
discoveries of horse-shoes in Romano-British buildings, as in 
Bucklersbury, London; or as described by William Ransom, 
of Hitchin; by our late colleague, J. D. T. Niblett, ete. 
Besides these proofs he instanced a Roman equestrian statue at 
Orange, in France, where the upturned foot of the horse shows 
__ the marks indicating the shoe nails. The usual argument against 
_ the theory that the Romans shod their horses is that no word 
_ for horse-shoe is found in Classical Latin: a weak point which 
really disappears if we refer to Suetonius’ Life of Vespasian, 
in which a story is told of a muleteer in the Emperor’s train 
_ stopping the Imperial party in order to afford a friend of his an 
opportunity of handing Vespasian a petition: the protest 
_ being that one of the mules needed a smith to attend to him. 
- It seems whimsical to contend that mules were shod, but not 
horses: especially when we remember the speed at which the 
express messengers drove along the hard paved roads; a treat- 
ment that would quickly destroy the hoofs of any animal 
unless they were so protected. 
