| Corpus Refs: | none |
| Site: | WRXTR |
| Discovery: | inc, 1967 Everall, C.V. |
| History: | Wright/Jackson/1968, 296, record that the stone was found during ploughing in the spring of 1967, and that it seems unlikely it was dragged very far from the original find-spot. After the stone was found it was taken to the house of Mr A.W.J. Houghton at Pulverbatch. |
| Geology: | Jackson/Wright/1968, 296: `buff sandstone'. |
| Dimensions: | 0.69 x 0.46 x 0.15 (converted from Wright/Jackson/1968) |
| Setting: | in display |
| Location: | Wroxeter The stone is in the site museum at Wroxeter. |
| Form: | other Wright/Jackson/1968, 296--297, state that the stone appears to be a re-used fragment of a Roman inscription or tomb-stone although none of the possible earlier text survives. The stone has a recess on the lower right hand side with the inscription occupying the upper margin. The recess occupies c. 60% of the stone's surface. There is a circular hole cut in the existing corner of the recess. The margin which contains the text is approximately 11" high. |
| Condition: | complete , good The medieval monument is complete and well-preserved, the Roman monument which supplied the raw material is incomplete and less well preserved.
|
| Folklore: | none |
| Crosses: | none |
| Decorations: | no other decoration |
| Wright, R.P. (1968): | CVNORIX | MACVSM/A | QVICO[L]I[N]E Expansion: CVNORIX MACVS MAQVI COLINE Translation: Cunorix (PN) son of Maqui Coline (PN). Wright/Jackson/1968 297--300 substantial discussion |
| Orientation: | horizontal |
| Position: | n/a ; broad ; n/a ; moulding The inscription is cut into a raised moulding which probably formed a border on the original Roman monument which was trimmed down. |
| Incision: | pocked Wright/Jackson/1968, 297: `[the] three lines of lettering had been pecked in the manner of quarry inscriptions'. |
| Date: | 460 - 475 (Wright/Jackson/1968) Mainly based on linguistic grounds, but also on more general palaeographic observations (Wright/Jackson/1968, 300). |
| Language: | Incomplete Information (rcaps) |
| Ling. Notes: | Wright/Jackson/1968, 299--300: `partly-Latinized Primitive Irish. … The name Cunorix preserves the final x, which makes it unlikely that the inscription can be later than the loss of certain final consonants, including x, which is an early aspect of the loss or shortening of some final syllables about 500. The Latinized macus for late Primitive Irish *maqqas from older *maqqos would seem to show the change of q to k before a back vowel, and Maqui the preservation of q before a front vowel. Hitherto there has been reason to think the former took place in or by the first half of the sixth century, whereas before a front vowel, q may not have become k until towards the end of that century, a distinction which is quite natural phonetically and is strikingly paralleled in the history of Vulgar Latin. Lastly Coline, which is on the face of it an error for Colini, calls for two linguistic comments. First, it does not yet show the vowel change which would have been expected to turn it into Culini at some time in the later part of the fifth century; and second, it has -e for -i. If this last is not simply a mistake, it may be that at about this time final long vowels unprotected by a final consonant were already beginning to become shortened and indistinct, a development which is a forerunner of the total loss of certain final syllables about 500 mentioned above; and the local engraver employed, not an Irishman and not knowing the language but hearing Cunorix's heirs say something like kol'in'I, took this last sound for an e, as a speaker of Latin naturally would, and therefore used E, probably thinking the form was a feminine genitive of the Latin first declension if he thought about it at all'. |
| Palaeography: | Wright/Jackson/1968, 299: `Epigraphically, the lettering is crude Roman monumental capitals, pecked, not chisel-cut, markedly different from the `official' Roman inscriptions of the Empire period, though the Ravenscar inscription, with its debased capitals, belonging most probably to the year 407, is a (very untypical) `official' inscription which is not at all unlike it. In fact, the lettering of the Wroxeter stone is indistinguishable from that of the earliest series of post-Roman `inscriptiones Christianae' of the West, dated by Nash-Williams between the first half of the fifth century and the middle of the sixth, before the intrusion of any uncial forms. That the Cunorix inscription could well be as late as the early part of the sixth century, on purely epigraphic grounds, is shown by Nash-Williams's nos. 104 (Justinus securely dated 540), 138 (Vorteporix, very probably about 550) and 139 (Paulinus, perhaps about the same date). Thus epigraphic considerations alone would allow a date somewhere between the beginning of the fifth century and the middle of the sixth'. |
| Legibility: | good There is some surface damage to the text, and a little of the right hand edge has been lost, but it appears legible with only two letters (third line, L and N) noted as questionable by Wright/Jackson/1968, 297. |
| Lines: | 3 |
| Carving errors: | 0 |
| Doubtful: | no |