ROMAN BUSINESS LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 152, 24 December 1929, Page 5

ROMAN BUSINESS LIFE

TRADESMAN'S NAME

FOUND

SELLER OF FACE CREAMS

The London "Daily Telegraph" is able to state that after the passing of many centuz-ies it has been established that in Eoman London. there lived a tradesman named Lucius Julius Senis; that Lucius sold face-cream; that he advertised his specialties by stamping his name on his jars (which he imported from Gaul). Lucius Julius Senis is, in fact, the first Eoman tradesman in London of whom we have ever heard. This slender link with the past, which nevertheless makes Eoman London so much more alive and real to us, has been established through the discovery during excavations at Moorgate of the fragment of a pot of red Samian ware, bearing part of an inscription—which was Lucius's advertisement.

Another fragment of a black pot, also with an inscription, which has been found gives the name of a second tradesman—either living in or doing business with London. He also dealt in preparations.

By a coincidence the scanty information given in each case supplements still scantier information concerning these two' tradesmen contained in inscriptions on fragments previously discovered.

TWO FRAGMENTS.

The discoveries are due primarily to a City Corporation official, Mr. Quintin Waddington, who is attached to Guildhall Museum, and who fulfils the duty of watching all excavations. The discovery at Moorgate* of the fragment of a pot of red Samian ware was nothing in itself, for there are many hundreds of such fragments.

It was the base of a little bowl, perhaps when perfect four inches in diameter. Such bases are not infrequently stamped in the middle with the potter's name.

This fragment bears no name of its maker, but instead there is an inscription in * two lines, which runs: Livlseniser Ocodadaspr. Not much in that, it might seem, but Mr. Waddington expands the contracted Latin into the following: "Lucii Julii Senis ad aspritudinem." And this in English reads: "Lucius Julius Senis's saffron salve for roughness (of the eyes or eyelids)." That, too, might not convey very much, but we have heard of this Lucius of London before. The British Museum has a fragment of a precisely similar pot, also recovered from city soil, but many years ago, and it has precisely the same inscription, which after the contracted words have been separated is this: "L. lul. Senis Crocod. ad aspr." It was a possibility that Lucius -was a patient receiving treatment. But from the repetition of the same inscription it pretty plainly follows that he was ' a Komaji tradesman of London, who used this stamp to advertise his wares. Lucius Julius Senlis's ointment was evidently a speciality—what to-day wo should call a patent preparation or medicine.

And it shows how very much like ourselves were our predecessors of eighteen centuries ago. A similar system of advertisement is employed today by the makers of jams, marmalade, and many other things sold in jars. Lucius was a druggist of Londiniuin. He must have imported, his jars from Gaul, for Samian ware was not manufactured in Britain.

THE SECOND FIND.

Mr. Waddington's second find also is a stamp, on a not unlike fragment of a pot, this time of black ware. It is the one word "Vindaci," and it overlaps and partly' obliterates another stamp. The name Vindacius is unusual. Here the point is that we have traced a second Roman tradesman living in London or doing business with -London, for some seventy years ago there was found at Keitchester a thin square slab of stone, each of the four edges of which was engraved as a seal for marking the packets; of one of four different preparations, put up and sold y a"- °eullst or druggist whoso name was 1. Vmdacius Ariovistus "' A prosperous tradesman of Koiriau London might well have sent his ointments as tar-afield as Kenchester, near Hereford when the Pax Eomana' was well established.