ANCIENT INSCEIBRD STONES. 49 



" wards as on real Roman monuments. — The last letter but one in the 

 "second line may be V inverted. It seems too that there is a piece 

 " of bad spelling in the third line, where the word TRIS is employed 

 "forTRES. It is further to be observed that the letters are not 

 " all of the same size, — nor are the lines arranged with much atten- 

 " tion to parallelism. Taking these peculiarities into account, it 

 " may be concluded, with sufficient probability, that this inscription 

 " was cut in the stone in times of barbaric influence, and when the 

 "carving of such monuments was confided to rude and unpractised 

 " hands rather than to those of professed stone cutters and scholars. 

 " Looking at the roughness and the irregularity of the letters, I 

 " should at once infer that the inscription came from persons not 

 " much accustomed to this kind of work. If we compare the forms 

 " of the letters with those of fairly ascertained Roman inscriptions, 

 " — such as that at St. Hilary in Cornwall, the distinction will be 

 "immediately understood. On the other hand, no 'minuscule* 

 " forms appear in this present case: the letters are all 'capital'; 

 " there is no approach to anything like an ' uncial ' letter among 

 "them: and therefore, if I ventured to assign any limits of date, I 

 " should, from the palaeographical characters of the letters alone, say 

 " that the inscription is not earlier than A.D. 400, nor later than 

 "A.D. 700. 



" With regard to the interpretation of the words there may be 

 " two, — perhaps three ways of reading them : and to make the 

 " comparison more clear, I will draw up my own readings in two 

 "parallel lines. I conceive then that the words may be taken to 

 "run in one of the following formulae : — 



1 / 2 



NONNITA NONN ITA 



ERCILIAI ERCILI VI 



RIGATI TRIS FILI RICATI TRIS FILI 



ERCILI HCI ERCILI HCI 



" Inclining on the whole to the second of the above readings, I 

 " should represent it in a more correct and expanded form, thus : — 



NONNITA 



ERCILI 



VIRICATI TRES FILM 



ERCILI HIC CONDITI JACENT 



"meaning that three children of a Romanized Briton, Ercilius, 



£2 



