110 INSCRIBED RoMAN STONES OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
it is often impossible to decide how the words are to be taken. 
Next there is the name of the person or persons who erected the 
statue or tablet, with some information regarding them, the name 
usually standing in the nominative to fec7t, poswit, or other verb of 
kindred meaning, frequently not expressed. A simple legionary 
tablet bears only the name and the title of a legion. 
3. SEPULCHRAL STONES.—Inscriptions on these generally 
commence with the words, Dizs Manzbus, or a contraction of them, 
in the dative governed by sacrum, often omitted. Then follows 
the name of the deceased person, with his age and other particulars, 
more or less full, generally in the nominative, as being the subject 
of a verb (vit or sztus est) expressed or understood ; but it is some- 
times put in the genitive, dependent on Dz7s Manzbus, or in the 
dative, as in No. 9, and made the indirect object of a verb, the 
subject of which is the name of the person who caused the stone 
to be erected. The relation of this person to the deceased, or 
other particulars, are often added to the name. 
Of the stones to be here noticed the altars are the most 
numerous and, with one exception, the most important. In form 
a Roman altar was an adaptation of a pedestal, and consisted 
of a moulded. base, a central portion, and a capital, on the top 
of which the gift was laid or the offering burnt. This top might 
be simply a flat space, or it might have ridges along its front and 
back edges, which became cushion-like rolls or volutes at the two 
sides, so as to leave an enclosed space. This is the case in No. 10. 
In most of the Birrens altars, however, there is a different 
arrangement. Between the volutes there rises a projection with a 
bason-shaped sinking, which, in some cases, takes the shape of a 
patera. Ail these hollows, of whatever character, are generally 
termed /ocz, or “hearths,” as if intended for the fire of the burnt- 
offerings ; ‘‘ but,” remarks Professor Baldwin Brown, “it has been 
urged, with much show of reason, that when the sinking is bason- 
shaped, as on the class of altars so largely represented at Birrens, 
or is even fashioned into a stone patera, it is meant to receive 
libations, or, at most, the blood of the victim, and not a fire to 
consume the offering.”* Usually an inscription fills the whole or 
* Structure and Ornamentation of the Birrens Altars, Proc. Soc. of 
Antiq. of Scotland, vol. xxxi., pp. 169-178, 
