Latin Reference — Vol. V: Stone Latin
Reading Romano-British inscriptions. This is where Vols I–IV cash out: tombstones, altars and dedications are short, formulaic, and built almost entirely from datives, accusatives and a handful of third-person verbs. A surprisingly small toolkit unlocks most of what's carved in Britain.
The national corpus is the Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB), searchable free at romaninscriptionsofbritain.org — every stone below has an RIB number you can look up, with photographs.
How stones are written
Conventions to expect on the stone and in scholarly transcriptions:
| Convention | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ALL CAPITALS | The only letterforms; often no word spacing, or dots (interpuncts) between words |
| Abbreviation | Ruthless and standard: D M, V S L M, COH (cohors), AN (annōrum) |
| ( ) in transcripts | Editor expanding an abbreviation: D(is) M(anibus) |
| [ ] in transcripts | Editor restoring lost or damaged letters |
| Ligatures | Two letters sharing a stroke to save space |
Stonecutters charged by effort, and formulae were ordered from pattern books — which is why the same phrases repeat from Hadrian's Wall to the south coast. Formulae are the vocabulary of this volume.
The perfect tense — the tense of stones
Inscriptions record completed acts: he made, she lived, they set this up. That's the perfect tense, and its third-person forms are the most common verbs in Roman Britain.
Perfect endings (on the perfect stem):
| Person | Sing. | Pl. |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | -ī | -imus |
| 2nd | -istī | -istis |
| 3rd | -it | -ērunt |
The stone-cutter's four:
| Form | Meaning | Found in |
|---|---|---|
| fēcit | made (this) | builders, craftsmen, tomb-makers |
| posuit | set (this) up | dedications, tombstones |
| vīxit | lived | tombstones, with years |
| solvit | fulfilled, paid (a vow) | altars |
Aside — accusative of duration. Vīxit annōs XXX — "lived thirty years". Time how long goes in the accusative, no preposition. Spot AN, ANN or ANNOS on a tombstone and you're reading a lifespan.
The formulae
| Abbrev. | Expansion | Meaning | Mechanics |
|---|---|---|---|
| D M | Dīs Mānibus | "To the divine shades" | dative pl — the dead person's spirit among the Mānēs |
| H S E | hic situs est | "here lies" (lit. is placed) | sum + participle |
| I O M | Iovī Optimō Maximō | "To Jupiter Best and Greatest" | dative + agreeing superlative adjectives |
| V S L M | vōtum solvit libēns meritō | "fulfilled the vow willingly, deservedly" | vōtum acc object · solvit perfect |
| DEO / DEAE | to the god / goddess | dedication opener | dative |
| CONIVNX | spouse | family terms: fīlius son, fīlia daughter, lībertus/līberta freedman/-woman |
Aside — the Mānēs. The Romans addressed every grave to the Dī Mānēs, the collective spirits of the departed — even, eventually, on Christian-era stones, so fossilised had D M become. A tombstone is literally a letter in the dative: addressed to someone no longer here. The case system doing theology.
Worked stone I — an altar (the standard pattern)
The commonest altar formula in Britain, assembled here as a typical example of the pattern (hundreds survive on this exact skeleton):
I O M / C·IVLIVS·SEVERVS / |> LEG·II·AVG / V·S·L·M
| Line | Expanded | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| I O M | Iovī Optimō Maximō | To Jupiter, Best and Greatest |
| Gāius Iūlius Sevērus | Gaius Julius Severus | |
| > LEG II AVG | centuriō legiōnis secundae Augustae | |
| V S L M | vōtum solvit libēns meritō | fulfilled his vow, willingly and deservedly |
Mechanics: god in the dative (recipient), dedicator in the nominative (doer), unit in the genitive (of the legion), and the perfect solvit sealing a completed bargain. An altar is a receipt: I asked, you delivered, here's payment. The |> symbol is the centurial sign.
Worked stone II — Regina (RIB 1065, South Shields)
One of the most moving stones in Britain:
D M REGINA LIBERTA ET CONIVGE / BARATES PALMYRENVS NATIONE / CATVALLAVNA AN XXX
To the divine shades: Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barates the Palmyrene, a Catuvellaunian by origin, aged 30.
Barates, a merchant from Palmyra in Syria, freed and married a British woman of the Catuvellauni — the tribe of the Hertfordshire/Essex region — and buried her at the mouth of the Tyne. Beneath the Latin he added a line in his own Palmyrene script: "Regina, freedwoman of Barates — alas." The grief is in his mother tongue.
Aside — wobbly cases. Look closely and Barates' Latin slips: Regina sits in the nominative where the dative (Reginae) belongs, and coniuge is ablative. Provincial Latin on stone is often imperfect — second-language Latin, carved by second-language masons. Reassuring company for any learner: the Empire ran on Latin exactly as wobbly as yours.
Worked stone III — ink, not stone (Vindolanda Tablet 291)
For contrast, the other register of Romano-British Latin: a wooden writing-tablet from Vindolanda, c. AD 100. Claudia Severa invites her friend Sulpicia Lepidina to her birthday (spelling normalised):
Claudia Sevēra Lepidīnae suae salūtem. — Claudia Severa to her Lepidina, greetings. (Lepidīnae: dative — letters, like tombstones, open by naming the recipient in the dative.)
rogō libenter faciās ut veniās ad nos — I ask that you gladly come to us — ad + accusative, motion toward, exactly as Vol. I promised.
She closes in her own handwriting: valē soror, anima mea karissima — "farewell, sister, my dearest soul". It is among the earliest surviving Latin written by a woman's hand anywhere in the empire — and it was found at the damp northern edge of the world.
The drill
On the RIB website, search any site near you — Chichester, Bath, Silchester. Take one short stone. Expand the abbreviations, name the case of every noun, find the perfect verb. One stone per train journey is genuine reading of genuine Latin, which beats Caecilius and his garden by some distance.