Un ‘pallium’ dalla Britannia

In the ancient site of Aquae Sulis, now Bath in Somerset, there was a temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis-Minerva and the only natural spa complex in Roman Britain. Here a group of laminae written on lead was discovered, many of which were composed after a theft suffered from the petitioner, who always asks for restitution of the stolen good and in some cases also for punishment for the guilty. In one of these laminae in particular, nr. 62, the integration that has been proposed affects the way in which the complaint is made (“I X have lost (my) Italian, Greek, Gallic cloak”) and raises some problems. After the analysis of the editio princeps, whose interpretation is also accepted in subsequent works, we will offer an alternative which consists in a different integration of the lacuna concerning the first word (la[neum] instead of la[enam]). This new interpretation is based also on the double function of pallium, that, specified as woollen cloth, is not to be considered as a garment, but as an accessory to be used after the bath, as it is well explained by the semantic ambivalence of the word ‘cloak or cloth’, due to the fact that it is wrapped around the body.