A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE symmetrically than seven. Representations of these deities are however not very common in Britain, and representations in stone seem to occur only, or almost only, in Germany. In the mutilated condition of our Irchester fragments it may be advisable not yet to ascribe them very confidently to this series of monuments.* A fourth discovery, made about 1853, also possesses considerable interest. It is a Roman tombstone found at or near the point i in the plan, lying with the face downwards over a rough cist or sepulchre which contained some bones and broken urns. Those who found it thought it a Roman grave which had at some remote date been rifled and the tombstone overturned. But a Roman grave is hardly possible inside the walls, and it is for other reasons probable enough that the grave is the work of later men who brought the Roman tombstone from its original site, presumably outside the walls and near the road marked d in the plan. The tombstone itself is a plain slab with a sunk panel, measuring in all 42 inches in length and 20 inches in height. It is now in the British Museum, where I have seen it. It bears in plain large letters, which afford no clue of date, the inscription : — D ▲ M ▲ S A ANICIVS SATR/ STRAT© CoSMSF 'To the memory of Anicius Saturn(inus) or Saturu(s), strator to the governor. . . .' The ' strator ' was a soldier selected to have the charge of the horses of a high officer — usually the governor of a province or the general of a legion. The sense of the last three letters msf is uncertain. Possibly ms stands for Moesia Superior, and in that case Anicius at some time in his life was strator to some governor of that province ; otherwise we should suppose him strator to some governor of Britain. What he was doing at Irchester, whether he had horses to look after there, or died while accidentally at the place, or settled there after his discharge from military service, are questions which it is use- less to ask. If however he was at some time strator to the governor of Moesia the third conjecture is not unlikely.^ Other objects found inside the walls include Samian, Castor and other wares, glass, enamelled^ and other fibulas (fig. 13), painted wall plaster — one piece with illegible writing on it, in Northampton Museum — iron tools, lead weights, small objects in bronze and Kimmeridge clay, bones of animals, tiles and bricks of various kinds, including flue-tiles, roof-slates from the Colly Weston quarries, and, in short, all ' See Wright, Celt, Roman and Teuton, p. 322; Victoria History oj Hampshire, i. 308; F. Haug, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, ix. 17. A fragment of an octagonal stone showing Mars, Mercury, Juppiter and Venus, found at Chesterford and now in the British Museum, is quoted by Wright as a parallel in stone, and perhaps rightly, though there are one or two doubtful points about it, and it may have had only seven figures of gods. Mr. Baker says {Arch. Assoc. Reports, xv. 57) that he found also some arms and legs, besides the two pieces shown in fig. i z ; these seem to have disappeared.
- C. Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, iii. 251, iv. pi. xiv. ; C.I.L. vii. 78. For the Stratores see
Ephemeris, iv. 406-9.
- Journal of the British Archaeological Association, iii. 251. Many of the objects mentioned in the
next few lines are now in the Northampton Museum. 182
