we must therefore assume a road to Richborough. And,
fortunately, there is an obvious possibility. Two Roman roads, one
running due north from Dover, the other due east from Canterbury, meet
about a mile south—west of Richborough, at the hamlet of Each End.
These roads can now be traced no farther. But Each End has yielded no
Roman remains, and the two roads cannot have stopped there. They must
have gone on a mile to Richborough. It is true that some 600 yards of
the intervening mile is marshland, and may have been sea in Roman times.
But it was more probably salt marsh, and it may well have been crossed
by a causeway such as is common in similar situations elsewhere.
From the structural remains of Richborough we pass to the
smaller objects discovered on the site. These, though very plentiful,
need not detain us long, for a detailed description of select examples
forms a notable feature of the recent Excavation Reports. But
attention may here be directed to a few objects which have a special
intrinsic interest. (1) In the first place, mention has already been
made of two groups of fragmentary inscriptions or remains of marble
casing found chiefly in the vicinity of the platform (above, p. 27). The
minute relics of the main inscription include the letters VM, a P, B
or R, an M, PE, SV, and a portion of two lines with an A in the upper
and M . M or M . N in the lower.42 Nothing can at
present be made of these. The secondary group consists mostly of small
numeral letters which have also been cited (Pl. IV). To these we may add
the fragment found by Professor Garstang in 1900 and bearing in letters
one inch high the end of a word . . . AVIT, which suggests the words [opus
consumm]avit or the 1ike.43 (2) The excavations of
1900 also yielded from a trench just east of the ‘cross‘ an ingot of
silver stamped with the moneyer’s name. In shape it is somewhat of an
hour-glass outline, 4¾ in. long, 3¼ in. wide at the ends, and 2 in. at
the centre ; it is thickest at the middle (¼ in.) and thins out at the
ends (to about ⅛ in.) ; it weighs 10 oz. 4 dwt., or 317.8
grammes, about a Roman pound.44 The metal has not been
analysed, but, if one may judge from such tests as specific gravity, it
is principally silver with a little lead or tin. In the middle it bears
an inscription, in letters 2/16 in. or 3/16
in. tall : EX OFFI
ISATIS Ex officina Isatis : ‘From the
workshop of Isas (or Isaac).’ It belongs to a small group of similar
objects, all agreeing in weight and shape and character. One instance
has been found in London, others near Coleraine in north Ireland, and
others again at Dierstorf, near Minden, in north-west Germany. The
London and Coleraine ingots are dated by coins found with them to the
end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century. The Dierstorf
specimens may belong to A.D. 425-37. Silver at this period seems to have
been given and taken in trade principally by weight. Even the regular
silver coins of the time vary so much that they must have been more
often appraised by the scales than by any nominal value. These one-pound
ingots seem to
42 Second
Richborough Rep . 12.
43 Arch. Cant. xxiv,
272 ; Eph. Epig. ix, 990 ; illustrated in the Second
Richborough Rep. pl. xiii.
44 Arch. Cant. xxiv,
272 (brief mention); Eph. Epig. ix, 1257, p. 640. The ingot is
now in the Canterbury Museum. For similar ingots, see Corpus Inscr.
Lat. vii, 1196, 1198; Brit. Mus. Guide to Roman
Britain, 72 ; Willers, Numismatische Zeitschrift xxx, 211,
xxxi, 367, and Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor (Hannover 1901),
p. 221. |