As a small aside on the discussion of Virgil and Tolkien, I stumbled upon something a couple of years ago and I am not sure if it is generally known.
At Lydney in Gloucestershire, England, there is a Romano-Celtic temple of Nodens Mars. This was excavated in the 1920s and I gather that one of the assistants at the dig was the young Tolkien. Among the things that have been found at this site is a 4th C lead plate, presumably commissioned by a Silvianus, which said: DEVO NODENTI SILVIANVS ANILVM PERDEDIT DEMEDIAM PARTEM DONAVIT NODENTI INTER QVIBVS NOMEN SENICIANI NOLLIS PETMITTAS SANITATEM DONEC PERFERA VSQVE TEMPLVM DENTIS Subscribers to this list will, I am sure, be easily able to spot the possible link to Tolkien's work. For those who want to cheat a bit, there's more about it here: http://www.roman-britain.org/places/lydney.htm I wonder if anyone can detect any Virgilian reflections in Silvianus's text? (I can't) Patrick Roper ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
