rial and pontifical dignity. A few yards from hence was dug up the bones of a horse, and the ashes of his rider, together with an iron implement, evidently formed to pick the horse's hoofs, and fasten his shoes. With these were found a small silver musical instrument, a denarius of Septimus Geta, representing him at the age of nine or ten years; another also of Geta was found near, apparently two or three years older; these coins were of fine workmanship and in beautiful condition."[1]
We may be allowed to entertain doubts as to the article named being a hoof-pick; such an instrument would scarcely be necessary, if at all, with such narrow shoes, which had no concavity between them and the sole, as at a later period.
At Uriconium or Viroconium, now Wroxeter, in Shropshire, and which was one of the largest and most important Roman towns before its destruction in the middle of the fifth century, a fragment of a small horse-shoe has been gathered, but it is so oxidized and imperfect that none of its details can be made out. It is now in the Shrewsbury Museum.
A horse-shoe, supposed to be Roman, has been found at the ancient Conderum, Northumberlandshire. There is a drawing given of it in the Archæologia Æliana (vol. vi. p. 3), but no particulars as to its discovery or its dimensions. It resembles somewhat, if one can judge from the figure, those in the Cirencester Museum and at Chedworth, the cover of the shoe being wide, the borders even, and the foot-surface concave.
In the Rolfe collection of the Liverpool Museum is a
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, p. 518, 1848.
