668 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1723. 



ner house of St. Martin's-lane, on the north side as it comes into North-street. 

 It lay about 4 feet under ground, with the face upwards, which received con- 

 siderable damage from the tools of the labourers as they endeavoured to raise 

 it ; for besides the defacing of several letters, what was here recovered of the 

 stone was broke into 4 pieces : the other part of it, still wanting, is, in all 

 probability, buried under the next house, and will not be brought to light till 

 that happens to be rebuilt. The inscription is cut on a grey Sussex marble, of 

 6 Roman feet in length, as may be conjectured by measuring it from the 

 middle of the word templum to that end of it which is entire, and is not alto- 

 gether 3 English feet from the said point. Its breadth is 24- of the same feet, 

 the letters beautifully and exactly drawn, those in the first two lines 3 inches 

 long, and the rest 24-. 



Being at Chichester in September last with Dr. Stukely, we took an accurate 

 view of this marble, which is now fixed in the wall under a window within the 

 house where it was found ; and that we might be as sure of the true reading as 

 possible, wherever the letters were defaced, we impressed a paper with a wet 

 sponge into them, and by that means found those in the fifth line to have been 

 as we have expressed them above, and not as in other copies that have been 

 handed about of this inscription. 



The only letter wanting in the first line is an n before eptvno, so there is no 

 difficulty in reading that. As to the second, though it was more usual in in 

 scriptions of this nature to express the donation by the word sacrvm only, re- 

 ferring to the temple or altar dedicated ; yet we have so many instances in 

 Gruter's Corpus Inscriptionum of templvm and aram also cut on the stones, 

 that there is not the least occasion to say any thing further upon that point. 



The third line can be no other way filled up, than as I have done it by the 

 pricked letters : I must own, however, that 1 have had some scruple about the 

 phrase of domvs divina, the same thing as domvs avgvsta, the imperial 

 family, which I cannot say occurs, with any certainty of the time it was used 

 in, before the reign of Antoninus Pius, from wiiom, down to Constantine the 

 Great, it is very frequently met with in inscriptions. 



The third line I believe was ex avctoritate. tie. clavd. and the 

 fourth coGiDVBNi. R. leg. &c. that is, ex auctoritate Tiberii Claudii Cogidubni 

 Regis, Legati Augusti in Britannia; for the following reasons: we are in- 

 formed by Tacitus in Vita Agricolae, that after Britain had been reduced to a 

 Roman province by the successful arms of Aulus Plautius, and Ostorius 

 Scapula, under the emperor Claudius, quasdam civitates Cogiduno regi erant 

 donatae, is ad nostram usque memoriam fidissimus remansit, vetere ac jam 

 pridem recepta populi Romani consuetudine ut haberet instrumenta servitutis 



