Note 403 — WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

Museum Veronense, p. 120, 4. See also Gruter’s Inscriptiones Romanæ, tom. i. p. 633, fig. 5. The exact age of the dead, not as to years only, but as to months, as in the above tablet, and sometimes even as to days, is a feature peculiar to Roman monumental inscriptions. And nothing appears to us more strange and interesting in relation to Roman monumental tablets, than their total or almost total silence as to a future state, and the possibility of meeting beyond the grave. Out of the almost innumerable Roman monumental inscriptions that have now been copied and published, not one, as far as I am aware, ventures to refer to the hope of a future life. They seem to have looked upon the idea of a future state of existence as poetical imagery only, and not reality; all doubting, like Tacitus, “si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnæ animæ.”—Vita Agricolæ, cap. 46.