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Today, I'm back with the Romans, in what they might have called the Far West, what we think of as Suffolk.
我們如今稱為薩福克的地區，對羅馬人來說算是遠西，它是羅馬的西部邊陲。
We are around the year 400, and in England centuries of unprecedented peace and prosperity are about to end in chaos. Across Western Europe the Roman Empire is fragmenting into a series of failed states, and in Britain the Roman leadership is conducting a phased withdrawal. At moments like this it is tricky to be rich. There was no longer any organised military or civil force to protect them or their possessions, and as they fled, they left behind them some of the finest treasure ever found. Our object belongs to a fabulous collection of gold and silver buried in a field at Hoxne, Suffolk, around 410, and found nearly 1,600 years later...in 1992.
公元400年左右，不列顛幾百年來的和平與繁榮即將結束于一場混亂。羅馬帝國在西歐四分五裂，在英格蘭的影響力也逐漸減弱。在動蕩時期，富人的處境十分危險，不再有軍隊來保護他們的財產，因此，他們逃亡時留下了極為珍貴的寶藏。本文中的物品便是在公元410年左右埋藏在薩?？嘶艨松貐^的金銀財寶中的一件，1992年，它在藏1600余年后終于重見天日。
I'm holding a small statue of the upper half of a Roman matron, wearing very elaborate clothes and long dangly earrings. Her hair is fantastically complicated, it's twisted and plaited in an elaborate "up-do", and she is obviously a seriously 'grande dame' and very, very fashionable. She's about three inches high, so the size of a silver pepper pot - and indeed that is exactly what she is-a silver pepper pot. When I pick it up I can see that on the underside there is a clever mechanism which allows you to determine how much pepper will come out. You turn the handle and you can either close it completely, have it fully open, or in a kind of sprinkling mode.
我手里拿著的就是這樣一尊看起來就像是一位羅馬夫人的半身雕像，眼飾華美，掛著長耳環，發式精巧繁復，發辮盤在頭頂。一望即知，這是位莊重的貴婦，衣著入時。雕像高約8厘米，大小如同一個胡椒罐。而它也恰恰就是一個銀制胡椒罐，底部有精巧機關，可以控制胡椒的倒出量。只要扭動把手，就可以選擇全開、全閉或半開。
