Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/68

 Chap. It OF MANCHESTER- 45; certain. The reft is not fb. The former part of it is thus read by Horfeley, Cohors Prima Frifinorum, and thus by Ward, Cohortis Primae Frifmorusn; as the Jatter part is thus read by both, Centurioni Marco Savojiio Stipendiorum 23 *°. But both are mi ft a ken in part. Neither has remarked the very remark- able vacancy betwixt the letter P and the figures xxiii. There fbmething has been evidently erafed by time which muft be fupplied in the reading. And as that erazurc cannot be iiip- plied by the word Stipendiorum at large, becaufe it is cither expreffed by the abbreviature SP or was not exprefled at all, it muft be fupplied with lome other word which will agree with the figures xxiii. The interpofition of fuch a word betwixt the letters and the numerals muft have entirely precluded any con- nexion betwixt the one and the other. And the former can never be confidered as the abbreviature of Stipendiorum at all. They can be confidered only as the initial letters of two diftinft words, and as put for Sepulchrum pofuit. And both thefe words occur in inferiptions upon the fepulchral ftones of the Romans among us ". Nor is the name of the centurion, as the above-mentioned criticks have given it, Marcus Savonius, but, as the infeription undeniably fhews it to be, Marcus Savo. And the critick has furely no right to fuppofe a corruption when there is noreafonto make a corre&ion, or an abbreviation when there is no occafion for an addition. Thus ftated, the former part of the infeription muft be thus read, Cohors prima Frifinorum Centurioni Marco Savoni fepulchrum pofuit, The firft Cohort of the Frifini placed this fepulcher for Marcus Savo theCenturion : and the latter part muft be thus fupplied, Vixit annos 23, He lived 23 years. And, thus inferibed, the ftone appears to have been neither a monument of honour to the living nor a cenotaph to the dead. It appears to have been an honorary monument, ere&ed over the grave of Marcus Savo, who was a young Fri-j fian officer in the firft Frifian cohort, and who died in his twenty-fourth year. And it appears to have been eredted by the common aft of the garrifbn, in an honourable regard to the. me- mory of an hopeful though fubordinate otficer.
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