ROMAN STONE

Taranaki Daily News, 7 September 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

ROMAN STONE

MAN OF CAESAR’S TREASURY. NEWS OF LONDON LONG AGO. A stone with an inscription in Latin has been dug up near the Roman Wall behind Trinity Square on Tower Hill, London. . It forms part of the memorial of a Roman official who lived in the first or second century, and is five feet long and 18 inches high. On it are inscribed tne abbreviated words Proc. Provinc. Brit, and the name of the official’s wife, Julia Pacata, daughter of Indus. . Proc, stands for procurator, an official who was either an administrator of the imperial treasury or the financial manager of an imperial province. It will be recalled that Pilate was the procurator of Judea. The stone comes from one of the towers added to the Roman Wall of London years after Julia’s husband had been forgotten, perhaps in haste when Viking ships were advancing up the Thames, perhaps in Norman days when the Conqueror was building the great White Tower close by, making London bis stronghold. The tower on the Wall was destroyed in 1850, and another part of this memorial stone was then found and taken to the British Museum. London was an important town in Roman days, the centre of a great road system. Then, as now, it was a trading centre rather than a home of the legionaries, so that the official of the British province who collected the imperial dues at London was one of its most important civilians.