A Pointed Gift

"I went to Rome and all I got you was this cheap pen"

When Roman London, which was established in the early decades of the first century AD, was being excavated in 2010-14, a stylus was discovered dating to around AD 70 under what is now the Bloomberg Building. An amusing inscription is scratched around its length, that reads:

AB URBE V[E]N[I] MUNUS TIBI GRATUM ADF[E]RO
ACUL[EA]TUM UT HABEAS MEMORIAM NOSTRA[M]
ROGO SI FORTUNA DAR[E]T QUO POSSEM
LARGIUS UT LONGA VIA CEU SACCULUS EST [V]ACUUS 

This literally translates as:

I’ve come from the City and am bringing you a nice 
sharp-pointed gift as a souvenir of my visit.  
I ask fortune to let me have a way of giving you
a larger one, as the road is as long as my purse is empty.”  

Had the inscriber been a poet he might have written (very similarly) in elegiac couplets as follows:

Romā discessi gratum hoc tibi munus acutum   
   portans ut capiens sis memor ipse mei.    
Si fortuna daret, vacuus nec sacculus esset  
     ceu mihi longa via est, largius esset amem. 

I came from Rome and brought this pointed gift for you,
   So that receiving it you'd think of me. 
If fate allowed, were not my purse as empty, too, 
   As this road's long, I'd love that it might ampler be.

The writer's playing with the ideas of sharpness and length, which characterise both the stylus and the no doubt painful journey he's undertaking back to London from Rome. The pointedness (aculeatum) of the stylus contrasts, however, with the ampleness (largius) of the gift he wishes he were in a position to give. Since it would be harder to carry a large gift all the way back from Rome, he humorously equates the length of the journey with his lack of the funds he might need to buy a bigger present. 

It's wonderful how such everyday inscriptions bring ancient people to life. As a pen collector myself, I would have been delighted with the gift of a stylus, especially one coming all the way from Rome.