A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



fashion to wear such rings at one period. Whether the Poringland ring 

 referred to Constantius Chlorus, or his son Constantine the Great, or 

 some other member of the dynasty is not clear. In any case it belongs to 

 the first half of the fourth century.^ 



Lastly, a word is due to a very puzzling and curious object which 

 may or may not have been found at North Elmham. It is an urn, to 

 all appearances a purely English urn, formerly in the collection of the 

 Rev. Bryan Faussett and now in the Liverpool Museum (fig. 27). 

 Though an English urn, it bears outside it a Roman inscription in 

 rude and not altogether Roman letters, as follows : 



DM 

 L-AELIAE 



R V Fl N AE 

 VIXIT. A. XlTT 

 M. TTi: D."VI 



that is — D{is) M{ambus) LcsUce Rujince : vixit a{nnos) xiii, m[enses) Hi, 

 d{ies) vi. 'To the memory of L^lia Rufina, who lived 13 years, 3 

 months, and 6 days.' Its origin is uncertain, but as the urn accords 

 well in character with those found in Norfolk and particularly at North 

 Elmham, and as Faussett records receiving two urns from Elmham, 

 Mr. C. R. Smith conjectures that this urn came from that place. At 

 the same time, as he admits, it is strange that Faussett, in his record, 

 said nothing about the inscription, which is quite plain and conspicuous. 

 Now Roman remains have been found at North Elmham, for which 

 I may refer to the Index at the end of this article — a hoard of coins 

 and, as is alleged, some burial urns. But we may fairly look on the 

 inscribed urn with suspicion. For in the first place, its origin is obscure. 

 In the second place, its ceramic character is unquestionably post-Roman. 

 And thirdly, the inscription itself is of a somewhat unexpected kind. 

 Such an inscription, mentioning nothing but the dead person's name and 

 the exact years, months and days of his or her life, is common enough in 

 Rome : it belongs to a type represented by thousands of instances in the 

 columbaria and cemeteries of the great city. But the type spread little. 

 It is almost unknown in Britain, and we certainly should not expect to 

 find it on a burial urn or in a remote part of the British province. Add 

 to this the fact that the lettering is by no means above suspicion, and it 

 becomes impossible to avoid the fear that the inscription may have been 

 added to the urn by a modern hand ; it may indeed be a copy of a 

 genuine inscription actually found in Rome. In any case, it must not 

 count among the Roman remains of Norfolk.^ 



' The ring is described Archtxolo^a, xxi. 547 (with illustration), xxiii. 366 ; Corpus Inscriptionum 

 Lat'marum, vii. 1,301. For the whole class of rings see Mowat, Memoires de la SocUte des jintiquaires 

 de la France, x. (1889) 336, and my notes in the Archaological Journal, 50, 282. 



* See C. Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, v. 1 1 6-1 21 ; Hilbner, Corpus Inscriptionum Lotinarum, 

 vii. 94 ; Wright, Intellectual Obsewer, vi. 121. Smith held the urns to be the work of the earliest 

 Teutonic tribes to arrive in Britain — before (apparently) the end of the Roman dominion. Hubner 

 suggests that the urns are not really English urns at all. Neither suggestion seems in the least 

 likely. No one, so far as I know, has called attention to the peculiar character of the inscription : 

 epigraphists who know Romano-British inscriptions will however recognize that it is a serious question. 



312 



