1. This passage, widely agreed to be a letter, was found in an excavation of a Roman town house in Colliton Park, Dorchester, Dorset. The house is thought to date to the early 4th century AD and was first excavated in the 1930s; this passage was found in 1948, first notated in 1951 and has been heavily debated ever since.

2. VEREOR — either ‘I respect’ or ‘I fear’; without clear context it is hard to say which meaning applies, though I tend to lean towards the latter. Lane, 2010 makes a compelling argument that the distinction between these two meanings might not have existed for the Romans

3. LUNA — ‘moon’, or ‘Luna, the moon goddess’; as the passage is written in all capital letters, we cannot be sure. Possibly an accusative (with final -m dropped) governed by vereor, although in post-Classical Latin this verb more commonly takes the genitive

4. IC— ‘hic’, ‘here’; initial ‘h’ is often dropped in non-elite or spoken Latin, suggesting our writer may not have been well educated, although in general his spelling is sound. See Harrison, 1987, for discussion of post-Classical Latin spelling and class status

5. (-)T(-)IS† — so fragmentary as to be incomprehensible, hence the crux desperationis⁶; unclear even whether this is one word or two

6. Literally 'cross of deperation', a marking used around a corrupt part of text to indicate that the meaning is unintelligible. Interestingly, can also be used after a name to mark that someone is deceased

7. AR- - NTUM — ‘argentum’, lit. ‘silver’, ‘money’ by metonymy. Some (eg Sanders, 2003) have taken this as evidence that the passage describes some form of transaction, though this has largely been dismissed in light of words later identified which have little relation to commerce, or can be linked in only the most tenuous ways (see next note)

8. VISCUS — ‘intestine’, most often seen in its plural form, ‘viscera’, for in general the intestines accompany one another. The rest of the sentence has been lost, and it is unclear whether the word is being used literally or metaphorically. Sanders, 2005, (clutching at straws)⁹ suggests that someone is purchasing some animal intestines for purposes of augury

9. I believe it to be a flaw of the current state of academia that scholars are forced to make increasingly wild conjectures in order to get published; we might do much better if it were more acceptable to admit our own ignorance

10. ILLE — in late Latin, this can be used as a personal pronoun

11. At least one line is missing here. It seems to have been intentionally scratched out, though why, and with what instrument, is unclear

12. (-)DENT-S — likely a present participle derived from a verb such as suadeo (suadentes) or gaudeo (gaudentes). Bassi, 2002, posits ‘dentes’, ‘teeth’, and in combination with ‘viscus’ (see above) makes the passage a sort of medical compendium (with the reference to the moon alluding to menstruation?)

13. SUM — ‘I am’, though could also be read as ‘suum’, ‘his own’, with post-Classical vowel shortening

14. LU-US— this word has attracted much critical debate, in most part over the illegible character in its middle; its interpretation may be central to understanding the entire passage. Most agree with Whittington, 2007, in interpreting it as ‘ludus’, ‘game’, and the whole passage as a commentary on some form of contest or entertainment. Some read ‘lucus’, ‘forest’, as a reference to the passage’s setting; indeed, Dorchester would have been full of forests in the 4th century AD. Rivero, 2010, is alone in reading ‘lupus’, ‘wolf’, and drawing a connection with the sketches of unidentifiable figures on the reverse side of the passage, though as these figures are depicted walking on their hind legs, it seems unlikely that they are wolves¹⁵

15. at least, not any wolves familiar to us.

Originally published in Voidspace Zine, later reprinted in Archive of the Odd. Happy Halloween!!