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Potters, Oculists and Eye-Troubles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

George C. Boon
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Numismatics, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

Abstract

Malain Vernhet has published in Gallia a summary of one of the most important discoveries made at La Graufesenque for many years; a mass of waste associated with a large kiln contained the work of about forty potters, some familiar in the last stages of the export-trade to Britain. Among the decorated bowls were some with the potter's stamp L.COSI, conventionally dated to the late Flavian period. Several of them bore reliefs which prove that the style continued down towards 120: thus, on one bowl, which is illustrated, we see figures of a seated warrior turning his sword on himself, labelled DECIBALV, and of a prisoner condemned ad bestias, identified as PARTV. AS M. Vernhet remarks, reference is to the suicide of the Dacian king, Decebalus, in 106 and to the Parthian triumph, which Trajan did not live to experience, in 117. The design thus epitomizes the great conquests of the reign, and in all its provincial crudity speaks to us directly of facts, away from which the noble commemorative monuments in Rome and at Benevento all too readily, perhaps, beguile us.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 14 , November 1983 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © George C. Boon 1983. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Gallia xxxix (1981), 2543, esp. 35, figs. 7–8.Google Scholar

2 cf. Ville, G., La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien (B.E.F.A.R., ccxlv, 1981), 228–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Oxé, A., BJ cxxxix (1934), 94; K. Körber, Neue Inschriften des Mainzer Museums: Vierter Nachtrag zum Becker'schen Katalog (1905), 65 no. 90, for a photocopy of which I was obliged to the late Prof. H. Klumbach.Google Scholar

4 JRS xix (1929), 217 no. 12, fig. 14; CIL xiii, pt. 3 fasc. 2, 10021(231), R.C.A.H.M. Roman London (1928), 176 no. 61, pl. 63. Hübner (but not Smith) misread the trailing foot of the L as the tail of a Q (CIL vii, 1314, carried over into CIL xiii).—N.B. In citing Espérandieu's CIL xiii schedule, page-nos. are specified as such, and the individual items are shown in the form, e.g., E.23l, etc.Google Scholar

5 Parade-ground levelling near Building VIII; before c. 140, see my Isca (1972), 44–5.

6 C. R. Smith, Cat. Museum of London Antiquities (1854), 47 no. 208.

7 CIL xiii, pp. 601–2; Reims, see also J. Sichel, Nouveau recueil de pierres sigillaires d'oculistes romains (1866), 76–7. Others from Cologne and Mayen, Oxé, A. and Stokar, W. von, Germania xxv (1941), 25–6.Google Scholar

8 E.22cd, E.85ac, E.165ac (E.180ad,be is different because the stone was rectangular and the narrow ends bear highly condensed versions of the other inscriptions and were designed probably to mark cakes rather than sticks of salve).

9 E.112d and E.113b, both from Naix; E.151a from Dalheim, Luxembourg, and E.152d from Regensburg; E.238a, E.239a both from Mandeure (these last are in the Supplement, cited note 17 below). A Watercrook specimen in siliceous white clay (unusual) has been claimed as a doublet for E. 143, once in Sir Hans Sloane's collection (Britannia vi (1975), 289 no. 30), but the name of the collyrium has been broken off.Google Scholar

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11 Listed by Lieb, H. in Gedenkschrift für Pflaum (ZPE xliii, 1981), 213 note 23. We may cite E.186 from Biggleswade, naming preparations of Gaius Valerius Amandus and Gaius Valerius Valentinus, presumably relatives and partners (BM Guide to Antiq. of Roman Britain (1922), 33, fig. 24).Google Scholar

12 Sichel, op. cit. (note 7), 118; C. L. Grotefend, Die Stempel der röm. Augenarzte (1867), 9.

13 Körber and Oxé, locc. citt. (note 3).

14 There seems to be some doubt whether the cognomen Senis is properly attested, in an unequivocal nominative. That is why I have here opted for Senis as genitive of Senex. Kajanto, Cognomina, notes from CIL a total of 13 instances of Senex. For Sēnius or Saenius see RE, and also note it as common in Britain, cf. A. Birley, The People of Roman Britain (1979), 103, etc.

15 Oxé, op. cit. (note 3), 96–102. But I find my comparison is poor: Apollo, March 1983, adverts, p. 66, shows a first century bronze saucepan with a toad at the bottom ‘against poison,’ said to be from the Tiber.

16 Goessler, P., Germania xxii (1938), 28,Google ScholarBirley, Whence E., Yorks. Arch. Journ. xxxix (1958), 303–5.Google Scholar

17 The sources are: (1). Espérandieu in CIL xiii, 3.2; (2). idem, Signacula Medicorum Oculariorum(1905); (3). idem, Supplement, RA ser. 5 xxvi (1927), 158–69; (4). P. Wuilleumier, Inscriptions latines des Trois Gaules (1963), 2; 3–24;Google Scholar and (5). taking to 1977 and a few more finds into account, H. Lieb, loc. cit. (note 11), 207–15. I exclude the new Wroxeter stamp (Britannia xiii (1982), 419 no. 76)Google Scholar as uncertain, and likewise the two Colchester stamps (Ibid., viii (1977), 437 nos. 52–3. The total given by Goessler in 1938 (248 stamps) cannot be right, nor can totals given by Nutton, V. (Epigraphica xxxiv (1972), 21–2)Google Scholar. Nutton lists the inscriptions (Ibid., 18–21). I must also thank Mr. Mark Hassall and Dr Roger Tomlin for help over totals. Since this note was set up in type, the 31 stamps found 1927–1980, plus two latecomers in Helinium xxii (1982), 43–8, have been listed and well discussed byGoogle ScholarSalles, C., Rev. Archéologique du Centre de la France xxi (1982), 227–40. I have not been able to take all the details into consideration here. A consolidated list is much wanted.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 J. H. Dible, Napoleon's Surgeon (1970), 26–9.

19 J.-F. Tóchon d'Anneci, Dissertation sur I'inscription grecque IACONOC AYKION et sur les cachets aux médecins oculistes (1816), 15–16, citing E. 199 and Marcellus De Medicamentis, ed. Liechtenhan, viii, 121. For stratioticum cf. now Salles, loc. cit. note 17, 229 no. 4, mixtum militare.

20 Nielsen, H., Ancient Ophthalmological Agents (Odense Univ. Press, 1974), 97102. But the considerable value of this work lies in other directions.Google ScholarPubMed

21 E.I7. But Nutton op. cit. (note 17), 21, seems to doubt the provenance: I cannot see why.

22 Cicero, De Oratore i, 62. cf. Benedum, J., Gesnerus xxxv (1978), 2043, on Asclepiades.Google Scholar

23 Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia ed. Kühn, xii, 726.

21 Goessler, op. cit. (note 16), 28: five stamps of Q. Junius Taurus at Naix, E.111–115. Another of his collyria is named on E.45. In all we have 15 preparations of his on record, only one a duplicate: there are four different types of crocōdes, for example.

25 Thevenot, É., Latomus ix (1950), 415–26. Crowds were encouraged and business would have been good, cf. R. McMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981), ch. 2.Google Scholar

26 E.175, E.101; Barker, P., Wroxeter Roman City: Excav. 1966–1980 (D.O.E., n.d. [1981]), 16. Fragments of preserved human skulls also occurred.Google Scholar

27 M.-A. Dollfus, BSNAF 1963, 107–24, esp. III. Two stamps are known from theatres (E.11, E.54) and two more from amphitheatres (e.140, E.141). Note our comment in 25 above.

28 Archaeologia lv (1896), 252, whence my Silchester (1974), 137; see Pliny, xxxiv, cap. 18 ad finem. Realgar (red orpiment, arsenic sulphide) was used to a small extent at Pompeii as a pigment (S. Augusti, I colori pompeiani (1967), 88–9, 153–4),Google Scholar but not, it seems, in north-western Europe. For analyses see Kriems, M. and Wessicken, R., Ges. Pro Vindonissa, Jahresber. 1981, 67; L. Biek in N. Davey and R. Ling, Wall-Painting in Roman Britain (1982), 220–2.Google Scholar

29 Digest xxvii, 1, 6.2. The smallest cities were allowed up to five physicians, three sophists and three school-teachers. By the time of Severus Alexander they could be salaried (SHA, Alex. Sev., 44,4) and doubtless were at an earlier date. On the immunities see K.-H. Below, Der Arzt im römischen Recht (1953), ch. 2; E. Kuhn, Die städtische und bürgerliche Verfassung des Röm. Reiches (1864) i, 83–4; R. Briau, L'archiatrie romaine ou la médecine officielle dans l'Emp. romain (1877), ch. 3.

30 Digest xxvii, 1, 6.1; Nutton op. cit. (note 17), 25–9.

31 Nutton, op. cit. (note 17), 21–2.

32 Galen xii, 786, as interpreted to general satisfaction by Grotefend, 66: Kühn did not realize that στόλος βρεπανικός was classis britannica, or that Axios was a common name and Stolos ‘ein höchst sonderbarer.’

33 CIL xi, 5400; ILS 7812. cf. Duncan-Jones, R., PBSR xxxiii (1965), 290, 293. The price of 2,000 sesterces for the sevirate was ‘standard’ according to Duncan-Jones, and the 50,000 for manumission merely shows how good a physician Merula was.Google Scholar

34 Sichel, 76–7; cf. V. Deneffe, Les oculistes gallo-romains… (1896), 156. The find was ill-recorded: material from two distinct sites may have been mixed—the story is in Sichel. See also CIL xiii, pp. 601–2. The instruments are illustrated by Deneffe, whence Nielsen. For all the trousses see Dollfus. Lieb mentions a house at Kaiseraugst (op. cit. (note 11), 208 and note 10: ? Augst). Nutton's figures for stamps and trousses are very faulty, op. cit. (note 17), 26 note 14.

35 CIL xiii, 5708 ad finem. E.241 came from a villa o n Lansdown near Bath, and may be regarded as evidence of medical care on an estate likewise (JRS xiv (1924), 247 no. 16, misread).Google Scholar

36 Nutton has a percipient study of the army medical service (Chester Arch. Journ. lv (1968), 713). But I find it difficult to believe that ‘medicus ordinarius’ implies commissioned rank. RIB 1618, from Housesteads, commemorates a man of only 25 with that title—too young? Yet cf. CIL v, 5317 and ix, 1714 for medici dead in their twenties, and Nutton in his Epigraphica paper, 20 nos. 26, 24 ( 1924, 106; 1953, 59) medici ocularii dead at 17 and 19 years of age. Two Greeks at Chester give only cognomina on dedications and were doubtless servile, unlike another at Binchester (RIB 461;Google ScholarJRS lix (1969), 235 no. 3; RIB 1028). Might the dedicator of RIB 808 (Maryport) not have been a freedman of the Governor Egnatius Lucilianus (Birley, Fasti, 197)? We might add that the commissioned position of surgeons in the British army (which inevitably colours our view of the Roman arrangements) was the envy of the surgeons in the Grande Armée, right up to Larrey himself (Dible, op. cit. (note 18), 331). There is no evidence, I think, to show that the Roman army had commissioned surgeons or physicians, other than the doubtful word ordinarius.Google Scholar

37 Note 543 in Wuilleumier's list, inscribed in Greek characters, the language being Latin, presumably for the sake of security.

38 Celsus, De Medicina, ed. Spencer (Loeb), vi. 6 passim. There is an excellent short account of the importance of bathing in ancient medical care by Fontanille, M.-T., Rev. Archéologique du Centre de la France xxi (1982), 121–30; see also D. Gourevitch in the next fascicule, 203–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Lieb, op. cit. (note 11), 213.

40 E.59, cf. Celsus vi, 6.17; Dollfus, op. cit (note 27), 114.

41 Deneffe, op. cit. (note 34), 29.

42 Grotefend, op. cit. (note 12), 5, was the first to refer to the non-Greek cognomina—Celtic (one really German—Ariovistus, on a Kenchester stamp, E.195).

43 CIL xiii, p. 601.

44 E.67; and see note 3.

45 See note II.

46 Galen xii, 773.

47 Celsus vi, 6.25c with E.90, E.91; cf. vi, 6.5b.

48 Celsus vi, 6.12.

49 The medicines for ear-trouble, for example, are mostly organic, see Celsus vi, 7 passim.

50 Pliny xxxiv, cap. 11.

51 Tôchon, op. cit. (note 19), 6–14, pl. i, nos. 1–3; pl. ii, 1 for another, also from Tarentum. Reproduced in J. Y. Simpson, Archaeological Essays (ed. Stuart, 1872), facing 185, and also by Nielsen, op. cit. (note 20), 98.

52 Dioscorides De materia medica i, 132 (R. T. Gunther, The Gk. Herbal of D. (1959), 71–2); Royle, J. F., Trans. Linnaean Soc. xvii (1837), 8394, extensively quoted by Simpson, loc. cit. cf. Pliny xii, cap. 8; xxiv, cap. 14.Google Scholar

53 Scribonius Largus, Conpositiones, ed. Helmreich, clxiii.

54 Ibid., xviiii.

55 Royle, op. cit. (note 52), 92–3; Simpson, op. cit. (note 51), 191.

56 Ibid., 192–4.

57 CIL xiii, p. 602.

58 Suetonius, Augustus, 59; Below, op. cit. (note 29), 22.

59 Simpson, op. cit. (note 51), 186–7, Pl. facing 185, no. 1.

60 Pliny xxiv, cap. 14.

61 Abbé H. Coste, Flore…de la France i, 274 no. 715, Rhamnus infectoria, considered by Sibthorpe to be the likeliest European equivalent.

62 Celsus vi, 6.5b and 6.5, for example, contained lycium as one of eight and thirteen ingredients respectively.

63 Celsus vi, 6.25b, cf. E.135 and Deneffe, op. cit. (note 34), 156.

64 Galen xii, 766–77.

65 Nielsen, op. cit. (note 20), 93–4, only makes the obvious point about defects of vision, and otherwise refers to the governing Hippocratic, humoralistic ideas about sexual over-indulgence as a cause of blindness, current still in the 19th century (cf. Dible, op. cit. (note 18), 27, on Larrey's views) and later, when they died out at the level of dire warnings to boys.

66 Spectacles were invented in Italy about 1285, see a letter from Prof. J. R. Levene in Country Life March 26, 1981. Even so, the sorry tale of Pepy's long sight and astigmatism shows that optical matters were scarcely understood as late as his day.

67 Note 63. Both Deneffe, op. cit. (note 34), 152–6 and Sichel, op. cit. (note 7), 13–14, have good discussions of trachoma, useful because they date from a period before the introduction of modern drugs; Deneffe knew that ‘granulations néoplastiques were ‘d’origine microbienne.’

68 Switzerland, Deneffe, op. cit. (note 34), 155; quotation, E. S. Perkins, Encycl. Brit. (15th ed. 1974), 7, 118–9.

69 Deneffe, op. cit. (note 34), 156; Galen xii, 773: copper oxide 48 dr., saffron 24 dr., myrrh 12 dr., haematite 8 dr., opium 12 dr., 36 white peppercorns, gum 80 dr., make up with Falernian wine.

70 Celsus vi, 6.27a.

71 R. C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims (1977), 106–7, 146–50.

72 F. Jones, The Holy Wells of Wales (1954), 96–8; cf. Thevenot, op. cit. (note 25), 419, for the ancient picture.

73 Finucane, op. cit. (note 71), 79.

74 Drummond, J. C. and Wilbraham, A., The Englishman's Food (ed. Hollingsworth, , 1958), 77–8 780–2, etc.Google Scholar

75 cf. Davies, R. W., Saalburg-Jahrbuch xxvii (1970), 99 note 113.Google Scholar

76 Pliny xxv, cap. 3. Why britannica, since the plant was not confined to Britain, and the island was then independent? It is no anachronism of Pliny's, as the Haltern lid proves.

77 Davies, op. cit. (note 75), 92–3, fig. 8.

78 cf. the index to the diseases, C1L xiii, pp. 607–8, and cf. Celsus vi, 6.1c and especially 6.38, where the vitamin A in the liver, eaten as well as smeared on the eye, would rapidly have alleviated the symptoms. See also Scribonius Largus, xxxii. Desplte the late Roy Davies's well-argued contrary conclusion in Britannia ii (1971), 122–42, it is well-known that the Roman soldier preferred his cereals, like his Italian counterpart of the Second World War. Another sidelight to the same effect is in Vitruvius v, 9 ad fin.: writing of food-storage in case of siege, he says frumenta… expeditius congerentur, et si desint, holeribus, carne seu leguminibus defenditur— so reread Davies, 138–9. As our own recent experience in the Falkland Is. indicates, there is (and always has been) a great difference between the ration provided for active campaigning and that available to a settled garrison.Google Scholar

79 Carcopino, J., Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Penguin Books, 1956), 4653; see also A. Carré, L'hygiéne et la santé dans Rome antique (1933), ch. 3 passim, contrasting the cleanly practice of bathing with the dirt and infestation of the homes of the poor—and not so poor, as we read in Martial and Petronius, not to mention Hadrian's lines in rejoinder t o the poet Florus—and pointing out that the water supplied by the aqueducts was wholly untreated.Google Scholar

80 At York, the spicules of marine sponges used instead of toilet-paper were found in the sewer—the first instance, so far as I know, when the well-known literary references to the use of sponges where we would use toilet-paper have been archaeologically borne out: P. C. Buckland, The Environmental Evidence from the Church Street Sewer (1976), 14. Caerleon, cf. my Isca (1972), 39–40; Fortress Baths drain was not a foul drain, but was still rather rough: about the same, perhaps, as at Lincoln, J. B. Whitwell, Roman Lincolnshire (1970), 31, fig. 2. Nasty state of affairs at Vindolanda, M. R. D. Seward, The V. Environment (1976), 23–4. Conditions in a native town, see my Silchester (1974), 61, 89–90, 317 note 27.

81 G. R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (1969), 73.

82 See note 80.