Note 401 — WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

In the text I have given the reading of this puzzling inscription suggested by Hultmann, in his Miscellanea Epigraphi, p. 415, the letters referring to the corps to which Sporus was attached being very indistinct—namely, “Medico alar indianae etheriae astorum.” The inscription, if Hultmann’s suggestion be correct, indicates the third wing or cohort of the Asturian or Spanish auxiliaries. The first and second wings of the Astures (Astorum), and the first cohort of them, are mentioned in the celebrated “Notitia imperii” as located at the time at which that army-list was made out, at three different military stations along the line of Hadrian’s wall from the Tyne to the Solway; and various inscriptions raised by these troops have been dug up in Northumberland and Cumberland. See Dr. Bruce’s work, p. 47, 110 and 154. These English slabs all read Asturum, instead of the Astorum of the Notitia, and of the Italian inscription referred to in the text. Let me add that inscriptions referring to soldiers of the Ala Indiana or Indian wing of auxiliary horsemen, have also been found in England.—See an example in Mr. Akerman’s Archæological Index, p. 67, and Messrs Buckmann and Newmarch’s Corinium, p. 115.