Note 127 — PART III. LOCAL DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKS. (continued 3)

Some antiquaries have conceived, that in the last two words of the inscription, a reference is made to the emperor Septimius Severus. This cannot be admitted, for—1. The emperor’s name would not be placed after that of the prefect: 2. The term instante implies the discharge of a subordinate duty; for, not to mention other examples, the temple of which the Cilurnum slab records the restoration (p. 186), was built by command of Marius Valerianus, under the superintendence of (instante) Septimius Nilus: 3. That princeps was the designation of a subordinate officer in the army, appears not only from a collation of other inscriptions, but from the following statement of Manutius—'In a legion there were three kinds of foot soldiers, hastati, principes, and triarii, and in each there were ten centurions, who were called the first hastatus, the second hastatus, the third, and so on, up to the tenth; the first princeps, the second, and so on; but the triarii, the bravest of all, were named in a different manner, for they did not call them first triarius, but primipilus, or primipili centurio.'—Arch. Æl., ii. 88.

Principi is doubtless intended for the more usual form of the ablative, principe.