Laudator Temporis Acti

G.F. Browne (1833-1930), The Recollections of a Bishop (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1915), p. 208:

A rather marked example of divergence in the interpretation of inscriptions is to be found at Bath. In a case in the Pump Room there, containing Roman coins, a small sheet of metal is shewn, with an incised inscription. The following statement is appended to it:

Read by Professor Sayce as a record of the cure of a Roman lady by the Bath Waters, attested by three witnesses; read by Professor Zangermeister as a curse on a man for stealing a table-cloth; by others as a curse on some one for stealing a Roman slave.

Bensoniana: From two Notebooks of A.C. Benson, Selected by J.A. Gere. Cornishiana: Sayings of Mrs Cornish, Mostly Collected by Logan Pearsall Smith (Settrington: Stone Trough Books, 1999), p. 21 (from Bensoniana):

In Pump Room at Bath a small sheet of metal with incised inscription. Read by Professor Sayce as a record of the cure of a Roman lady by the Bath waters, attested by three witnesses—by Professor Zangermeister as a curse on a man for stealing a table cloth—by Prof. Reed as an inscription (monastic) on the death of a lame bell-ringer from ague.

For Zangermeister read Zangemeister, i.e. Karl Zangemeister. On the inscription see R.S.O. Tomlin, "Vinisius to Nigra: Evidence from Oxford of Christianity in Roman Britain," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100 (1994) 93-108, an amusing article.


Rembrandt, Two Scholars Disputing