Fig. 1.—Goddess of Hope
(Roman Bronze found in London).
I have here only rapidly set down a few of the opinions which are still current[2]—views which are repeated, embellished, and amplified to distraction in more popular writings, and set out with much appearance of exactitude in most misleading maps.
The whole question, indeed, of the early topography of London is overloaded on a quite insufficient basis of fact, and quakes and gives way under the least pressure of examination.
CHAPTER I
ORIGINS—THE LEGEND OF LONDON—THE BRITISH CHURCH—THE
ENGLISH COME TO LONDON—ALFRED’S LONDON
| Like as the Mother of the gods, they say, Old Cybele, aray’d with pompous pride, Wearing a diademe embattild wide With hundred turrets, like a turribant: With such an one was Thamis beautifide; That was to weet the famous Troynovant. The Faerie Queen. |
Origins.—The earliest historic monument of London is its name. The name Londinium first appears in Tacitus under the date of A.D. 61 as that of an oppidum “not dignified with the name of a colony, but celebrated for the gathering of dealers and commodities.”