Part 33

The old Roman city stood more eastward, upon the banks of the river Itching coming from Winchester, where now is a hamlet called St. Mary’s. There is a handsome new church built upon the ruins of an old one, which they say was burnt in some French wars: it is near the present ferry and opposite to Bittern. Many antiquities have been found upon the site of the old city. Likewise at Bittern was an old Roman castle, surrounded by a ditch, into which the sea-water flowed: many antiquities likewise have hence been produced, of which Mr. Camden gives us an account. Perhaps the buildings on both sides the river were comprehended under one name of _Trausantum_; therefore this river must have been the _Antona_: it was ruined in the Danish wars, and Southampton arose from its ashes. This is the place memorable for the famous experiment of king Canute, who sitting upon the banks of the river, crowned and in regal robes, commanded the tide not to approach his footstool; but the ocean, like an unlimited monarch, was as regardless of his menaces, as the Hellespont, of Xerxes his bridles and fetters.

[Sidenote: +Portus Magnus.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LXXX.]

Leaving this lesson of the perishing glory of monarchs and cities too, we journeyed to Portsmouth, an entertaining sight of the maritime majesty of Great Britain, in this point excelling the ancient Roman grandeur. Over a moory common we passed by Fareham, and by Portchester, a castle made out of a Roman city. We have little reason to doubt that this is the _portus magnus_ of Ptolemy, as it deserves to be called, where a thousand sail of the biggest ships may ride secure: the mouth of it is not so broad, as the Thames at Westminster, and that secured by numerous forts; on Gosport side, Charles fort, James fort, Borough fort, which name seems to intimate a Roman citadel formerly there; Blockhouse fort, which has a platform of above twenty great guns level with the water: and on the other side, by Portsmouth, Southsea castle, built by Henry VIII. of a like model with those I saw near Deal upon the Kentish shore.

[Sidenote: TAB. LXXIX.]

Portsmouth is the most regular fortification, of the modern manner, which we have in England; a curious sight to those that have not been out of it. The government has bought more ground lately for additional works, and no doubt it is capable of being made impregnable; for a shallow water may be brought quite round it. Here is one of the greatest arsenals for the royal navy: above thirty men of war of the highest rates lie here, capable of being fitted out in less than a fortnight; among them, the Royal William, that can play off at once 120 battering-rams of brass, infinitely more forceable than that famous one Titus used against the walls of Jerusalem. The yards, the docks, the store-houses, where all their furniture is laid up in the exactest order, so that the men can go in the dark and fetch out any individual, is a sight beyond imagination. The immense quantities of cables, masts and tackle, of great guns, bullets, bombs, carcasses, mortars, granado’s, &c. these of all sorts and sizes, and the regular methods they are reposited in and distinguished by, are prodigious, and no where to be equalled but in England; for when I was informed that this place is outdone, in all the particulars, both at Chatham and Plymouth, there was no more room left for wonder. The Royal William’s mast is a noble piece of timber 124 foot long, and this is only the bottom part of the main mast; it is 36 inches diameter, clear timber: its lantern is like a summer-house: its great anchor and all accoutrements are equally astonishing. The rope-house is 870 foot long, one continued room, almost a quarter of a mile: we chanced to have the pleasure of seeing a great cable made here; it requires 100 men to work at it, and so hard the labour, that they can work but four hours in a day. The least complement of men continually employed in the yard is a thousand, and that but barely sufficient ordinarily to keep the naval affairs in good repair. But I have talked enough of matters so much out of my sphere. I was sorry to leave this amazing scene of naval grandeur, with the shocking sight of a wretched statue of king William, gilt indeed in an extraordinary manner; but of all the bad works in this fort, I have seen, it is the very last. From Portsmouth there is a fine prospect of the isle of Wight, famous for Vespasian’s first attempts in subduing the southern parts of Britain: its beautiful elevations, some woody, some downy, its towns, havens and white cliffs, at this distance, seem to persuade one it is an epitome of Great Britain, as that of the world; or that Nature made it as an essay, or copy, of her greater and more finished work. Before I leave Portsmouth I shall set down this catalogue of the British fleet as it stands this present year, given me by an officer; by which some people, fond of magnifying the mimic endeavours of some other powers, may calculate, if they please, when such will come up to rival it.

Rates. Guns. Nᵒ of each rate. Complement of men to each. _1st._ 100 7 780 _2d._ 90 13 680 _3d._ 80 16 520 70 24 440 ———— 60 ———— _4th._ 60 18 365 50 46 280 124 ———— _5th._ 40 24 190 30 4 155 ———— 152 ———— _6th._ 20 27 130 ———— ———— 179 3540 ———— ———— The whole complement of men 55720. Fire-ships 3 Bombs 3 Sloops 13 Yachts 12 Hoys 11 Smacks 2 Hulks 7 Store-ships 1 Hospital-ships 1 ———— 232

[Sidenote: TAB. LXXXII.]

I observed, the great quantity of water and ditches about this place is apt to render it aguish. The reader will excuse me from giving any description of the fortifications here, for the same reason that I did not offer to draw any thing; but passing by draw-bridges, bastions, gates, fosses, counterscarps, &c. we repeated our steps to the Ports-down hills, which are of chalk, and at a reasonable distance from the shore extend themselves into Sussex; leaving to the south a less elevated, woody, and rich country. Here we turned to admire the delightful view of the ground we had passed, and that we were going to: the ports, creeks, bays, the ocean, the castles fixt, and those moving on the water, the isle of Wight in its full extent, all lay before us, and under the eye, as in a map: Portchester, Gosport, which is a very considerable town, Portsmouth, Southampton, Chichester, and all the sea-coast from Portland isle to the Sussex coasts, were taken in at one ken. I took a little sketch of it in passing, in plate 82.

We found some of the Roman way upon this ridge, which I suppose went through Fareham and Havant, between _Trausantum_ and Chichester, with a vicinal turning out to Portchester: it goes east and west. We passed by a large long barrow. We were led to Chichester by the fame of a most ancient inscription lately discovered there, whereof transcripts were handed about, that appeared not exact enough: this has revived the lustre of Chichester; for, though the termination of its name, and a Roman road called Stane-street coming to it, is evidence sufficient of its being a Roman city, yet none has positively affirmed it, because we have not hitherto been able to assign it a name. Mr. Camden satisfied himself that it owed its name and foundation to Cissa, the South-Saxon king. It is probable the city was destroyed soon after the Romans evacuated this kingdom, either in the wars between the Britons and first Saxons, or by the plundering Danes, who ravaged all the sea-coasts; so that its name was utterly forgot: but Cissa becoming master of this country, and there chusing to fix his seat, repaired the ancient castle or walls, whose _vestigia_ were of too lasting materials wholly to have lost the appearance of their workmanship: then it was natural enough to prefix his name to this Roman termination, by which the Saxons always called castles of the Romans: or it might be simply called _caster_, _chester_, as was frequent in other places, till he restored it; and then it took his name, importing _Cissa’s chester_: but had it been originally founded by him, it would never have assumed that adjunct.

[Sidenote: TAB. LXXXI.]

I doubt not but the walls of the present city are built upon the old Roman foundations chiefly. It is of a roundish form, the river running under part of the walls. Two principal streets cross it at right angles upon the cardinal points, where stands a curious cross erected by bishop Read. The church takes up one of these quadrants: it is remarkable for two side-ailes on both sides, and the pictures of all the kings and queens of England since Cissa, which are hung upon the wall of the southern transept; all the bishops on the opposite wall. Eastward of the cathedral is a place called the _Pallant_, which seems derived from the Latin _palatium_. In the middle of North-street was dug up this memorable inscription, which I have printed in plate 49. To your explication of it nothing can be added: the reader and myself will be obliged to you for the leave you have given me here to insert it. It was happy we took great care in transcribing the letters; for, since it has been in the possession of the duke of Richmond, I hear a workman, who pretended to set the fragments together, has defaced it.

_An Account of a_ ROMAN INSCRIPTION _found at_ Chichester.

_By_ +Roger Gale+, _Esq._

[Sidenote: TAB. XLIX.]

This inscription, as curious as any that has yet been discovered in Britain, was found, the beginning of last April, at Chichester, in digging a cellar under the corner house of St. Martin’s lane, on the north side, as it comes into North-street. It lay about four foot under ground, with the face upwards: by which it had the misfortune to receive a great deal of damage from the picks of the labourers, as they endeavoured to raise it; for, besides the defacing of several letters, what was here disinterred of the stone was broke into four pieces: the other part of it, still wanting, is, in all probability, buried under the next house, and will not be brought to light till that happens to be rebuilt. The inscription is cut upon a grey Sussex marble, the length of which was six Roman feet, as may be conjectured by measuring it from the middle of the word TEMPLVM to that end of it which is intire, and is not altogether three foot English, from the point mentioned: the breadth of it is 2 and ¾ of the same feet; the letters beautifully and exactly drawn; those in the two first lines three inches long, and the rest 2¼.

Being at Chichester in September last with Dr. Stukeley, we took an accurate view of this marble, which is now fixed in the wall under a window within the house where it was found; and, that we might be as sure of the true reading as possible, wherever the letters were defaced, we impressed a paper with a wet sponge into them, and by that means found those in the fifth line to have been as we have expressed them above, and not as in other copies that have been handed about of this inscription.

The only letter wanting in the first line is an N before EPTVNO, and so no difficulty in reading that. As to the second, though it was more usual, in inscriptions of this nature, to express the donation by the word SACRVM only, referring to the _temple_, or _altar_, dedicated; yet we have so many instances, in Gruter’s _Corpus Inscriptionum_, of TEMPLVM and ARAM also cut on the stones, that there is not the least occasion to say any thing farther upon that point.

The third line can be no other way filled up, than as I have done it by the pricked letters: I must own, however, that I have had some scruple about the phrase of DOMVS DIVINA, the same thing as DOMVS AVGVSTA, the _imperial family_; which I cannot say occurs, with any certainty of the time it was used in, before the reign of Antoninus Pius, from whom, down to Constantine the Great, it is very frequently met with in inscriptions. This kept me some time in suspence, whether this found at Chichester could be of so early a date as the time of Claudius: but as we find several inscriptions in Gruter with those words in them, or I. H. D. D. _In Honorem Domus Divinæ_, which is much the same thing, without any mark of the time when they were cut, they may have been before the reign of Antoninus Pius, and then only came into more general use; and as the time that Cogidunus lived in, will not let this be of a later standing, I think we may offer it as an authority for the use of this piece of flattery to the emperors long before that excellent prince came to the purple.

The third line, as I believe, was EX AVCTORITATE. TIB. CLAVD. and the fourth COGIDVBNI. R. LEG. &c. that is, _Ex auctoritate Tiberii Claudii Cogidubni regis, legati Augusti in Britannia_; for the following reasons: we are informed by Tacitus, _in vita Agricolæ_, _cap._ 14. that after Britain had been reduced to a Roman province by the successful arms of Aulus Plautius, and Ostorius Scapula, under the emperor Claudius, _Quædam civitates_ Cogiduno Regi _erant donatæ, is ad nostram usque memoriam fidissimus remansit, vetere ac jam pridem recepta Populi Romani confsuetudine ut haberet instrumenta servitutis_ & Reges. This _Cogidunus_ seems to be the same person as _Cogidubnus_ in our inscription, the letter B in the third syllable making little or no difference in the word, especially if pronounced soft, as it ought to be, like a V consonant.

It is so well known to have been the custom of the Roman _Liberti_ and _Clientes_, to take the names of their patrons and benefactors, it would be wasting of time to prove the constant usage of that practice. Now, as this _Cogidubnus_, who in all probability was a petty prince of that part of the _Dobuni_ which had submitted to Claudius, and one that continued many years faithful to him and the Romans, (_vide Tacit. ut supra_) had given him the government of some part of the island by that emperor, nothing could be more grateful in regard to Claudius, nor more honourable to himself, after he was _romanised_, than to take the names of a benefactor to whom he was indebted for his kingdom, and so call himself TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS COGIDVBNVS.

I suppose him to have been a _Regulus_ of the _Dobuni_; because we are told by Dion Cassius (_in lib._ lx.) that Aulus Plautius having put to flight Cataratacus and _Togodumnus_, sons of Cunobelin, part of the _Boduni_ (the same people as the _Dobuni_) who were subject to the _Catuellani_, submitted to the Romans; and the name _Cogidubnus_, or _Cogiduvnus_, *Coc o Dubn*, or *Duvn*, (_vid. Baxteri Glossar. in verbis_ Cogidumnus, & Dobuni) signifying expresly in the British language PRINCEPS DOBVNORVM, seems to put the matter out of all doubt.

How far his territories extended, it is impossible to define. Bishop Stillingfleet, _Orig. Britan._ p. 63. supposes them to have lain in Surrey and Sussex. Sussex certainly was part of them, since the temple mentioned in this inscription was erected in it by his authority; and it is not unlikely, that besides the _Regni_, who were the people of those two counties, he might have that part of the _Dobuni_ which had submitted to the Romans, and seems to have been his own principality, together with the _Ancalites_, _Bibroci_ and _Segontiaci_, whose countries lay between the _Dobuni_ and the _Regni_, bestowed upon him; the words _civitates quædam_, in Tacitus, not importing no more than some _few towns_, but _several people_; the word _civitas_ always signifying a _people_ in that historian.

Before I proceed any farther, it will not be amiss to observe, that _Togodumnus_ and _Cogidubnus_, though their names are so much alike, were two distinct persons: the first was son of Cunobelin, king of the _Trinobantes_, vanquished and killed in battle by Aulus Plautius; the second, a prince that submitted to Ostorius Scapula, and continued in his fidelity to the Romans, _in nostram usque memoriam_, says Tacitus, who was born at the latter end of Claudius’s reign; so that _Togodumnus_ was probably dead before _Cogidubnus_ had his government conferred upon him.

I call it his government; for though, by the letter ·R· standing in the inscription with a point both before and after it, by which it plainly denotes an intire word of itself, it may seem that it was intended for COGIDVBNI REGIS, and I believe was so in respect of his _quondam_ dignity, yet it is evident, that he had condescended to take the title of LEGATVS AVGVSTI IN BRITANNIA from Claudius: and that too must have been only over those people that he had given him the government of; Aulus Plautius, Ostorius Scapula, Didius Gallus, Avitus Veranius, and Suetonius Paullinus, having the supreme command successively about this time in this island, the second and last of which are called expresly _Legati_ by Tacitus, _lib._ xii. _Ann. cap._ 23. & _Vit. Agric. cap._ 15. The _Legati Cæsaris_, or _Augusti,_ were those _qui Cæsaribus subditas regebant Provincias_.

The sixth line has lost at the beginning the letters COLLE; but so much remains of the word, as makes it to have been indubitably, when intire, COLLEGIVM; and the following letters are an abbreviation of FABRORVM.

These colleges of artificers were very ancient at Rome, as ancient as their second king Numa Pompilius, if we may believe Plutarch (_in vit. Numæ_) who tells us, that the people were divided by him into what we at this day call _Companies of Tradesmen_, and mentions the Τέκτονες or _Fabri_ among them; though Floras (_lib._ i. _cap._ 6.) says, that _Populus Romanus a_ Servio Tullio _relatus suit in Censum, digestus in Classes, Curiis atque_ Collegiis _distributus_. But as the power of the Romans extended itself, it carried the arts of that great people along with it, and improved the nations that it subdued, by civilizing, and teaching them the use of whatever was necessary or advantageous among their conquerors; from which most wise and generous disposition, among other beneficial institutions, we find these _Collegia_ to have been established in every part of the empire, from the frequent mention of them in the inscriptions collected by Gruter, Spon, and other antiquaries.

Several sorts of workmen were included under the name of _Fabri_, particularly all those that were concerned in any kind of building; whence we meet with the _Fabri Ferrarii_, _Lignarii_, _Tignarii_, _Materiarii_, _Navales_, and others: the last named may have been the authors of dedicating this temple to Neptune, having so near a relation to the sea, from which the city of Chichester is at so small a distance, that perhaps that arm of it which still comes up within two miles of its walls, might formerly have washed them. The rest of the fraternity might very well pay the same devotion to Minerva, the Goddess of all arts and sciences, and patroness of the Dædalian profession.

As no less than five letters are wanting at the beginning of the sixth line, there cannot be fewer lost at the beginning of the seventh, where the stone is more broke away than above; so that probably there were six when it was perfect. What we have left of them is only the top of an S: I will not therefore take upon me to affirm any thing as to the reading of them, which is so intirely defaced: perhaps it was A. SACR. S. _a sacris sunt_; perhaps it was HONOR. S. _Honorati sunt_: as to the former, we find these _Collegia_ had their _Sacerdotes_; therefore _Qui a sacris sunt_, which is found in inscriptions, (_vid. Grut. Corp._ xxix. 8. cxxi. +I. DCXXXII. I.+) would be no improper term to express them; or it might have been SACER. S. _sacerdotes sunt_, since we find such mentioned in the following inscriptions. _Spon. Miscell. Erud. Antiq._ p. 58.

MAVORTI SACRVM HOC SIGNVM RESTIT _ _ _ _ _ COLL. FABR. ARI CINORVM ANTIQVISS. VETVSTATE DILAPSVM ET REFECER. CVR. L. LVCILIVS LATINVS PROC. R. P. ARIC. ET T. SEXTIVS MAGGIVS SACER. COLL. EIVSD.

_Mavorti sacrum hoc Signum restituit Collegium_ Fabrorum Aricinorum _Antiquissimum, vetustate dilapsum, & refecerunt. Curabant Lucius Lucilius Latinus, Procurator Reipublicæ Aricinorum, & Titus Sextius Maggius_ Sacerdos _Collegii ejusdem_,

Ibid. p. 64.

L. TERTENI AMANTI SACER. COLL. LOTORVM IIVIR. C. SARTIVS C. F. ITERINVS ET L. ALLIVS PETELINVS D. D.

_Lucius Tertenius Amantius_ Sacerdos _Collegii Lotorum, Duumviri Caius Sartius, Caii Filius, Iterinus, & Lucius Allius Petelinus Dedicaverunt_.

As to the latter, those members of the college that had passed through the chief Offices of it, as that of _Præfectus_, or _Magister quinquennalis_, had the title of HONORATI conferred upon them: you have several of these HONORATI mentioned in Gruter, particularly a long catalogue of them _in Collegio Fabrorum Tignariorum_, p. +CCLXVIII. I.+ and in Reinesius’s _Syntagma_, p. 605. there is an inscription,

EPAGATHO TVRANNO HONORATO COLLEGI FABRVM TIGNARIORVM ROMANENSIVM _&c._

So that the vacuity in our inscription may very well have been filled up with one or other of these words; and the three next letters that follow them, D. S. D. _de suo dedicaverunt_, will agree with either of them, and what precedes them.

The last line has been PVDENTE PVDENTINI FILio: but there must have been a letter or two of the _prænomen_ at the beginning of it, unless it was shorter than the rest at that, as well as at the latter end of it: and from what I have said, the whole may be read as follows:

_Neptuno & Minervæ Templum pro Salute Domus Divinæ, ex Auctoritate Tiberii Claudii Cogidubni Regis, Legati Augusti in Brittanniâ, Collegium Fabrorum, & Qui in eo a Sacris [or Honorati] sunt, De suo Dedicaverunt, Donante aream Pudente Pudentini Filio._