Tandem D. O. M.

I would suggest that this inscription might be resolved into "Tandem Deus Otia Misit," a thanksgiving for the fulfilment of some oft-made prayer or long-cherished hope; the idea—if I am right in my conjecture—having probably been taken from the 6th line of Virgil's 1st Eclogue— "O Melibæe! deus nobis hæc otia fecit." Any accounts that remain of the great Carthaginian Captain's Cornish namesake, may perhaps tend to show that he had preferred the "otium cum dignitate" of literary leisure to the turmoil of the battle of life, and to the use of the *harness*, whether civil or military, that it had…