A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



symmetrically than seven. Representations of these deities are however 

 not very common in Britain, and representations in stone seem to occur 

 only, or almost only, in Germany. In the mutilated condition of our 

 Irchester fragments it may be advisable not yet to ascribe them very 

 confidently to this series of monuments.* 



A fourth discovery, made about 1853, also possesses considerable 

 interest. It is a Roman tombstone found at or near the point i in the 

 plan, lying with the face downwards over a rough cist or sepulchre 

 which contained some bones and broken urns. Those who found it 

 thought it a Roman grave which had at some remote date been rifled 

 and the tombstone overturned. But a Roman grave is hardly possible 

 inside the walls, and it is for other reasons probable enough that the 

 grave is the work of later men who brought the Roman tombstone 

 from its original site, presumably outside the walls and near the road 

 marked d in the plan. The tombstone itself is a plain slab with a sunk 

 panel, measuring in all 42 inches in length and 20 inches in height. 

 It is now in the British Museum, where I have seen it. It bears in 

 plain large letters, which afford no clue of date, the inscription : — 



D ▲ M ▲ S A 



ANICIVS SAT\R/ 



STRAT© CoSMSF 



'To the memory of Anicius Saturn(inus) or Saturu(s), strator to the 

 governor. . . .' The ' strator ' was a soldier selected to have the charge 

 of the horses of a high officer — usually the governor of a province or 

 the general of a legion. The sense of the last three letters msf is 

 uncertain. Possibly ms stands for Moesia Superior, and in that case 

 Anicius at some time in his life was strator to some governor of that 

 province ; otherwise we should suppose him strator to some governor of 

 Britain. What he was doing at Irchester, whether he had horses to 

 look after there, or died while accidentally at the place, or settled there 

 after his discharge from military service, are questions which it is use- 

 less to ask. If however he was at some time strator to the governor of 

 Moesia the third conjecture is not unlikely.^ 



Other objects found inside the walls include Samian, Castor and 

 other wares, glass, enamelled^ and other fibulas (fig. 13), painted wall 

 plaster — one piece with illegible writing on it, in Northampton Museum 

 — iron tools, lead weights, small objects in bronze and Kimmeridge 

 clay, bones of animals, tiles and bricks of various kinds, including 

 flue-tiles, roof-slates from the Colly Weston quarries, and, in short, all 



' See Wright, Celt, Roman and Teuton, p. 322; Victoria History oj Hampshire, i. 308; F. Haug, 

 Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, ix. 17. A fragment of an octagonal stone showing Mars, Mercury, Juppiter and 

 Venus, found at Chesterford and now in the British Museum, is quoted by Wright as a parallel in stone, 

 and perhaps rightly, though there are one or two doubtful points about it, and it may have had only 

 seven figures of gods. Mr. Baker says {Arch. Assoc. Reports, xv. 57) that he found also some arms and 

 legs, besides the two pieces shown in fig. i z ; these seem to have disappeared. 



* C. Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, iii. 251, iv. pi. xiv. ; C.I.L. vii. 78. For the Stratores see 

 Ephemeris, iv. 406-9. 



* Journal of the British Archaeological Association, iii. 251. Many of the objects mentioned in the 

 next few lines are now in the Northampton Museum. 



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