182 On an Inscribed Roman Tile recently found in Leicester. 



This inscription also is the work of legionary soldiers, and 

 informs ns that it was made by men of the second legion, when 

 they were employed in quarrying here in the consulship of 

 Flavius Aper and Albinus Maximus, which fixes the date to the 

 year 207. It appears, indeed, that this form of the letter l was 

 in use during the third century. It may be further remarked, 

 that the peculiar character of this monument of the eighth 

 legion has its significance. A mere tablet might have implied 

 simply that the legion in its march had halted to raise or repair 

 some work of defence ; but a tile, and that a roof- tile, marked 

 with the name of the legion, shows that the soldiers were em- 

 ployed in erecting buildings of a different character, and those 

 buildings were most probably for their own accommodation. 

 They were, in all probability, barracks. The tile thus furnishes 

 strong evidence that the eighth Roman legion was stationed for 

 some time at Rata?, or Leicester, probably at some period in 

 the third century. 



We are not very well acquainted with the history of the 

 movements of the eighth legion. It appears to have been 

 stationed on the borders of Germany, and Mr. Roach Smith, 

 in the second volume of his Collectanea Antiqua (page 140), 

 enumerates tiles bearing its stamp found at Niederbieber, on 

 the Rhine, which show that it was at some period stationed 

 there. We have no intimation in any historical record of the 

 sending of this legion into Britain, and the date and object of 

 its visit are, therefore, left entirely to conjecture. If it had 

 come over hither with Severus, it would hardly have been left 

 at Ratee, but would more probably have been taken to the 

 north ; and we have no reason for supposing that that emperor 

 brought a legion over with him. But the latter part of the 

 same century was the age of Carausius and Allectus, and when 

 Constantius came over in 292 to restore the rebellious province 

 to the empire, and had need of a very formidable army (as the 

 three legions in Britain would be arrayed against him), it is 

 extremely probable that he brought even more than one legion 

 over with him. The eighth legion was ready at hand, as Ger- 

 many and Gaul were in his division of the empire. Constantius, 

 victorious, established his residence at Eburacum ( York) , which 

 was now considered as the military capital of Britain ; and as 

 he came not to meet a foreign enemy, but to restrain a rebel- 

 lious population, it is not at all improbable that, during his 

 stay here, which ended only with his death, he may have 

 stationed a legion at Ratas. 



Thus, in this inscribed tile, accidentally preserved, we have, 

 perhaps, the only monument remaining of one of the most in- 

 teresting events in the annals of our island during the Roman 

 period, and one of which the history is very obscure, the re- 



