Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/209

AND THE PROBABLE DATE OF STONEIIENOE. 151 looked upon the Belgic province as an organic wliolc, which might indeed have developed itself at successive periods, but was not a mere aggregation of separate and independent parts. AVith respect to the states lying north of the Audrcd — i. e., of the great forest Avhich spread over the wealds of Kent and Sussex — the case was different. The Cantii, the At tre bates, the Catyeuchlani were probably all three Belgic races ; and indeed, as regards the Attrebates, we are able to make this assertion positively. All three seem to have been subject to the inipcr'noii of Cassivelaunus, but there is nothing to lead us to the inference that the Southern Belga3 acknow- ledged his supremacy. As so few years separated the reign of this })rince from that of Divitiacus, it is a reasonable pre- sumption that he was, if not a descendant, at least a successor of the Gaulish monarch, and consequently that the limits of his dominion defined the British hiqjeriam of his great pre- decessor. If so, the course of conquest which Divitiacus traced out must have nearly coincided with that followed by later invaders — by Caesar, b} Plautius, and by the Norman William ; and consequently this celebrated Belgic chief could not have been the conqueror who reared the Wansdike. This magnificent earthwork reached from the woodlands of Berkshire to the British Channel. Its remains have been carefully surveyed by Sir R. C. Hoare. The conquests it w^as intended to include, seem to have been, first, the Vale of Pewsey ; secondly, the mineral district of the Mendip Hills ; and, thirdly, the country lying between this range and the marshes of the Parret. Ptolemy gives us Winchester, Batli,^ and Ilchester, as the three principal towns of the Belgic province. If we run a line along the Wansdike from Berk- shire to the Channel, then along the coast to the Parret, then up that river eastward till we strike the southern borders of Wiltshire, and then follow the first Belgic boundary across Dorsetshire to the sea, we shall have defined, wdth tolerable accuracy, the northern and western boundaries, which Roman I geographers assigned to the Belgje proper. I ' Bath is just without the Belgic boun- to believe that London had a suburb dary, and, therefore, could not have been south of the river, even in the Roman a Belgic town. Ptolemy has, in other times ; and the Belj,MC fortress on the instances, assigned towns situated near a Wansdike, which lay immediately above frontier to the wrong people ; thus he the hot baths, may very probably have gives London to the Cantii. There are led the geographer into making tiie mis- generally circumstances connected with statement that has given rise to the the towns thus misplaced, which help us present note. to explain the blunder ; we have reason