Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/518

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502
BRAMPTON URNS.

interred, the names of servants official to such provisions, or the name of the artificer, or manufactor of such vessels; all which are particularly exemplified by the learned Licetus,[A 1] where the same inscription is often found, it is probably of the artificer, or where the name also is in the genitive case, as he also observeth.

Out of one was brought unto me a silver denarius, with the head of Diva Faustina on the obverse side, and with this inscription, Diva Augusta Faustina, and on the reverse the figures of the Emperor and Empress joining their right hands, with this inscription, Concordia; the same is to be seen in Augustino, and must be coined after the death of Faustina, (who lived three years wife unto Antoninus Pius,) from the title of Diva, which was not given them before their deification. I also received from some men and women then present, coins of Posthumus and Tetricus, two of the thirty tyrants in the reign of Galienus, which being of much later date, begat an inference that burning of the dead and urn-burial lasted longer, at least in this country, than is commonly supposed. Good authors conceive, that this custom ended with the reign of the Antonini, whereof the last was Antoninus Heliogabalus, yet these coins extend about fourscore years lower; and since the head of Tetricus is made with a radiated crown, it must be conceived to have been made after his death, and not before his consecration, which, as the learned Tristan conjectures, was most probably in the reign of the emperor Tacitus, and the coin not made, or at least not issued abroad, before the time of the Emperor Probus, for Tacitus reigned but six months and a half, his brother Florianus but two months, unto whom Probus succeeding, reigned five years.

In the digging they brake divers glasses and finer vessels, which might contain such liquors as they often buried, in or by the urns; the pieces of glass were fine and clear, though thick; and a piece of one was finely streaked with smooth white streaks upon it. There were also found divers pieces of brass, of several figures; and one piece which seemed to

  1. Vid. Licet. de Lucernis.