B. 2.—With this mass of material[[202]] it might seem to be an easy task to locate every Roman site in Britain; especially as Ptolemy gives the latitude (and sometimes the longitude[[203]] also) of every place he mentions, and the 'Itinerary' the distances between its stations. Unfortunately it is quite otherwise; and of the whole number barely fifty can be at all certainly identified, while more than half cannot even be guessed at with anything like reasonable probability. To begin with, the text of every one of these authorities is corrupt to a degree incredible; in Ptolemy we find Nalkua, for example, where the 'Itinerary' and Ravenna lists give Calleva; Simeni figures for Iceni, Imensa for Tamesis. The 'Itinerary' itself reads indiscriminately Segeloco and Ageloco, Lagecio and Legeolio; and examples might be multiplied indefinitely. In Nennius, particularly, the names are so disguised that, with two or three exceptions, their identification is the merest guess-work; Lunden is unmistakable, and Ebroauc is obviously York; but who shall say what places lie hid under Meguaid, Urnath, Guasmoric, and Celemon? And if this corruption is bad amongst the names, it absolutely runs riot amongst the numbers, both in Ptolemy and the [173] 'Itinerary,' so that the degrees of the former and the distances of the latter are alike grievously untrustworthy guides. Ptolemy, for example, says that the longest day in London is 18 hours, an obvious mistake for 17, as the context clearly shows. There is further the actual equation of error in each authority: Ptolemy, for all his care, has confused Exeter (Isca Damnoniorum) with the more famous Isca Silurum (Caerleon-on-Usk); and there are blunders in his latitude and longitude which cannot wholly be ascribed to textual corruption. Still another difficulty is that then, as now, towns quite remote from each other bore the same name, or names very similar. Not only were two called Isca, but three were Venta, two Calleva, two Segontium, and no fewer than seven Magna; while Durobrivae is only too like to Durocobrivae, Margiodunum to Moridunum, Durnovaria to Durovernum, etc. The last name even gets confounded with Dubris by transcribers.
B. 3.—In all the lists we are struck by the extraordinary preponderance of northern names. Half the sites given by Ptolemy lie north of the Humber, and this is also the case with the Ravenna list, while in the 'Notitia' the proportion is far greater. In the last case this is due to the fact that the military garrisons, with which the catalogue is concerned, were mainly quartered in the north, and a like explanation probably holds good for the earlier and later lists also. Nennius, as is to be expected, draws most of his names from the districts which the Saxons had not yet reached; all being given with the Celtic prefix Caer (=city).
B. 4.—Amid all these snares the most certain identification of a Roman site is furnished by the discovery of inscriptions relating to the special troops with which the name is associated in historical documents. When, for example, we find in the Roman station at Birdoswald, on the Wall of Hadrian, an inscription recording the occupation of the spot by a Dacian cohort, and read in the 'Notitia' that such a cohort was posted at Amboglanna per lineam Valli, we are sure that Amboglanna and Birdoswald are identical. This method, unfortunately, helps us very little except on the Wall, for the legionary inscriptions elsewhere are found in many places with which history does not particularly associate the individual legions thus commemorated.[[204]] However, the special number of such traces of the Second Legion at Caerleon, the Twentieth at Chester, and the Sixth at York, would alone justify us in certainly determining those places to be the Isca, Deva, and Eboracum given as their respective head-quarters in our documentary and historical evidence.
B. 5.—In the case of York another proof is available; for the name, different as it sounds, can be traced, by a continuous stream of linguistic development, through the Old English Eorfowic to the Roman Eboracum. In the same way the name of Dubris has unmistakably survived in Dover, Lemannae in Lympne, Regulbium in Reculver. Colonia, Glevum, Venta, Corinium, [175] Danum, and Mancunium, with the suffix "chester,"[[205]] have become Colchester, Gloucester, Winchester, Cirencester, Doncaster, and Manchester. Lincoln is Lindum Colonia, Richborough, Ritupis; while the phonetic value of the word London has remained absolutely unaltered from the very first, and varies but slightly even in its historical orthography.
B. 6.—With names of this class, of which there are about thirty, for a starting-point, we can next, by the aid of our various lists (especially Ptolemy's, which gives the tribe in which each town lies, and the 'Itinerary'), assign, with a very high degree of probability, some thirty more—similarity of name being still more or less of a guide. For example, when midway between Venta (Winchester) and Sorbiodunum (Sarum) the 'Itinerary' places Brige, and the name Broughton now occupies this midway spot, Brige and Broughton may be safely assumed to be the same. This method shows Leicester to be the Roman Ratae, Carlisle to be Luguvallum, Newcastle Pons Aelii, etc., with so much probability that none of these identifications have been seriously disputed amongst antiquaries; while few are found to deny that Cambridge represents Camboricum,[[206]] Huntingdon (or Godmanchester) Durolipons, Silchester Calleva, etc. A list of [176] all the sites which may be said to be fairly certified will be found at the end of this chapter.
B. 7.—Beyond them we come to about as many more names in our ancient catalogues of which all we can say is that we know the district to which they belong, and may safely apply them to one or other of the existing Roman sites in that district; the particular application being disputed with all the heat of the odium archaeologicum. Thus Bremetonacum was certainly in Lancashire; but whether it is now Lancaster, or Overborough, or Ribchester, we will not say; Caesaromagum was certainly in Essex; but was it Burghstead, Widford, or Chelmsford? And was the original Camalodunum at Colchester, Lexden, or Maldon?
B. 8.—And, yet further, we find, especially in the Ravenna list, multitudes of names with nothing whatever to tell us of their whereabouts; though nearly all have been seized upon by rival antiquaries, and ascribed to this, that, and the other of the endless Roman sites which meet us all over the country.[[207]]
B. 9.—For it must be remembered that there are very few old towns in England where Roman remains have not been found, often in profusion; and even amongst the villages such finds are exceedingly common wherever excavations on any large scale have been undertaken. Thus in the Cam valley, where the "coprolite" digging[[208]] resulted in the systematic [177] turning over of a considerable area, their number is astounding, proving the existence of a teeming population. Many thousands of coins were turned up, scarcely ever in hordes, but scattered singly all over the land, testifying to the amount of petty traffic which must have gone on generation after generation. For these coins are very rarely of gold or silver, and amongst them are found the issues of every Roman Emperor from Augustus to Valentinian III. And, besides the coins, the soil was found to teem with fragments of Roman pottery; while the many "ashpits" discovered—as many as thirty in a single not very large field—have furnished other articles of domestic use, such as thimbles.[[209]] Even horseshoes have been found, though their use only came in with the 5th century of our era.[[210]]
B. 10.—Now there is no reason for supposing that the Cam valley was in any way an exceptionally prosperous or populous district in the Roman period. [178] It contained but one Roman town of even third-class importance, Cambridge, and very few of the "villas" in which the great landed proprietors resided. The wealth of remains which it has furnished is merely a by-product of the "coprolite" digging, and it is probable that equally systematic digging would have like results in almost any alluvial district in the island. We may therefore regard it as fairly established that these districts were as thickly peopled under the Romans as at any other period of history, and that the agricultural population of our island has never been larger than in the 3rd and 4th centuries, till its great development in the 19th.