Gents Mag 1853 part 1 p.74
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Gentleman's Magazine 1853 part 1 p.74
some years ago to build the Hill Head House, now occupied by Mr. Ramshay. In Mr. Potter's quarto tract on Aboglanna, printed in 1851, is a restoration of the "Decuman Gate," in which he has thrown arches over the gateway; and the truth of the vision which, with learned and sagacious eye, he then imagined, has been vindicated by his late discoveries. To one of the piers of the gateway, 8 1/2 feet high, the projecting impost is still attached, and the first stone of the arch rests thereon. The voussoir is two feet long, and 15 inches thick at the broad, and 11 1/2 at the narrow end. At the outside of the southern tower of the gate, on the ground, was found a broken slab. It appears to have fallen from its place, and to have been fractured by a stone which had afterwards fallen upon it - and which, indeed, was found lying upon it still. This slab bears an inscription which may be thus given (two or three of the letters being conjectural):- SVBMO DIO IV LIO LEG AVG PR PR COH I AEL DC CVI PRAEEST M CL MENANDER TRIB Mr. Potter extends the inscription as follows:- "Sublimo Dio Julio Legato Augusti Propraetori Cohors Prima AElia Dacorum cui praeest Marcus Claudius Menender Tribunus." Julius Severus, the noble Roman who he supposes to be here named, was propraetor of Britain in the time of Hadrian, and was recalled, as "the most courageous of his generals," to go against the Jews. This was in 132 or 134 A.D.; and it may safely be concluded that about that time was the gate erected by Julius Severus, and the slab inserted in the wall by the first AElian cohort of the Dacians, over whom Menander was tribuune. Mr. Potter, however, does not ascribe the formation of the camp to Hadrian. The gate now laid bare is of a later and superior style of architecture to the camp generally - more highly finished, the work of a more refined age. The camp is of the time, Mr. Potter inclines to think, of Agricola. The suburbium lay without the present gate, and its ruins may still be traced with ease, although covered with vegetation. Mr. Potter expects to find the foundation of a similar gate on the opposite side of the camp; and if so, the number of the gates would be six. Four have been already described; one remains to be excavated; the sixth or Praetorian gate was destroyed some time ago, to form a barn. Of the four gates that have been exposed, only one gateway has not been walled-up. Stones, it is conjectured, were subsituted for soldiers. Mr. Potter's interesting paper concludes with a few remarks on the rude representations of a palm branch and sword, emblems of Peace and War, which are engraven on the inscribed stone. ... |
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