Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/45

have known, except from the Ancyrean inscription, (cf. Franz in Gerhard's Archæologische Zeitung, Feb. 1843, p. 17—26,) of the three kings of Britain, Damno, Bellaunos, and Timcon? The old chroniclers who vamped up a history of Britain prior to the Saxon period from Roman histories, old legends, and such traditionary matters as reached them, have without hesitation called the predecessors of Cunobelinus or Cymbelin, Tenuantius, Themantius, Theomancius, Cennantius, Tenuancius, Tudor Belin, and Tubelin. Is it too much to suppose that they have taken the line of those kings who were in the strictest alliance with Rome, and the recognised native sovereigns at that epoch? Nor is the name of the coins and chroniclers, after all, so widely remote. Those who have to deal with harmonized barbarian names, will readily conceive with Menage's joke upon hippos and cheval, how they are bien changés en passant. As the name of Tasciovanus is not mentioned among the kings who came to Augustus, as Cunobelin died early in the reign of Claudius, and his sons had commenced their political intrigues at the time of Caligula, Tasciovanus must have lived in the age of Tiberius. His coins, which have been confounded by writers with those of his son Cunobelin, are of rather a ruder character; the fullest form in which the name occurs on any of them, is Tasciovan, and it is found in the still more abridged forms, Tasciava, Tascio, and Tasc. The full form of his name Tasciovanus, only occurs in the genitive on the coins of his son, but in many instances the contractions are attributable to the mutilated condition of the coins. It is probable that to the early part of his reign are to be referred those coins which are un- accompanied by any inscription on the reverse; he probably struck subsequently those with Ver on the reverse, which indicated Verulamium, for Verlamio occurs on what must be considered an autonomous coin of that town, issued perhaps during the interregnum which followed the death of Cunobelin. Mr. Haigh has supposed the Sego on the reverse to be Segontium, Mr. Akerman inclines to the idea of Segonax, but in what relation were these two monarchs? Had Tasciovanus another son, or is it possible that, descended from one of the four confederate kings of Kent, he had established his court at Verulamium? But there is another coin presenting no less a difficulty which occurs in this series. This is a gold coin struck like those of Timcon and Eppillus, having on the ob-