NOTES ON LATIN INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN BRITAIN. 397 
nection in which they appear, are, if the words be intended to mean 
on the occasion of his election or appointment, the money for the 
repairing and repainting, should, according to usage, have been pro- 
vided from his own funds; and if the words be intended merely as an 
honorary designation, there is no authority, so far as I am aware, for 
their use in this sense under such circumstances. The words seria 
and pecunia suggested the invention of the story about the money 
having been found in a vessel. The objections to this application of 
longa seria defossa are—the word longa seems inappropriate when 
applied to seria, even though its shape is said to have been oblonga ; 
and defossa does not signify dug up, which seems to have been the 
meaning intended, but duried, so that the translation of the words, 
as they stand, which would first present itself, would be, a long earthen 
vessel having been buried, not having been dug up. If seria be the 
correct reading the most probable prima facie reference would be to 
the seria which was kept in temples. Thus: 
Lamprid. Heliogab. c. 6. ‘ Penetrale sacrum [Vestze] est wats 
conatus: cumque seriam, quasi veram, rapuisset, atque in ea nihil 
reperisset, applosam fregit.” 
But it seems not unlikely that either the true reading of the word 
on the stone is serie, or that the final a is a mistake in orthography 
for e. We have thus longa serie, and if we supply annorum, this 
phrase and nimia vetustate will agree well with refici et repingi. Thus 
in Orelli, n. 3300, we have PERMVLTO TEMPORE VETVSTATE 
CONLAPSVS. As to the age of the inscription, a surmise may 
perhaps be formed with some reason from the use of the word repingi, 
a verb, which I do not recollect having seen in any Latin writer 
earlier than the 6th century, A. D. On the restoration, as a whole, 
it is unnecessary to say more than that I am persuaded that no one 
familiar with Latin Epigraphy would mistake it for a genuine inscrip- 
tion ; indeed it is not as plausible as many of the Ligorian for- 
geries. 
50. Another example, of the danger of attempting a restoration 
with insufficient data, is to be found in Mr. C. Roach Smith’s remarks 
on an inscription on a stone found, I believe, at Netherhall, Cumber- 
land. 
It is figured in the Collectanea Antiqua, i. pl. 48, fig. 7, and the 
following (p. 202) are Mr. Smith’s observations on it :—= 
