Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/46

34 verse a horseman, with a sun and a wheel in the area; on the reverse is an inscription of two lines, reading TASCIO-VRICON TASCIOV-RICON, and published by Lambert, p. 146. pl. xi. No. 21. as TASCIERICON, probably misread. It has been conjectured by Mr. Haigh, that the latter portion of the legend is the name of the town Uriconium or Wroxeter: but this would stretch the dominions of Tasciovanus to an almost universal empire. It is probable that the best specimens of this type are those reading Tasciovricon, but I have never seen one so perfectly preserved as I should desire. One I have recently seen offers the following peculiarity; there is a period at the end of the second line RICON, but none between any other of the letters; there might have been one between the V and R, but there is none present on that published by Mr. Haigh. I conclude from this, and the fact of Cunobelin occasionally inscribing his legends in the same manner on his obverse, that Tasciovricon is a contraction for Tasciovriconis, the genitive form of another British regulus, named Tasciovrico, who enjoyed a certain authority in the south of the island, and whose coinage was modelled on that of the Brigantes and Atrebates, under the protection of the Romans. I submit this explanation with all due deference as preferable to supposing the name of a prince and town blended thus together contrary to the analogy of the British and Gaulish series. There is another coin attributable to Tasciovanus published in the thirty-three plates of Dr. Stukeley, on which unfortunately no reliance can be placed, and reproduced by Dr. Pegge in his Essay: the reverse of this coin reads Cearatic, and it has been hastily assigned to Caradoc or Caractacus. As the coin has since disappeared it is not possible to take it into consideration; it was probably a mis-read specimen of Cunobelin. This closes the series of the coins of Tasciovanus, whose seat of empire seems to have been placed at St. Alban's, but his son and successor, for reasons which history has not recorded, removed his capital to Colchester. I think two styles of coinage of this monarch, who must have reigned for some period, may be traced. In the earlier one he followed his father's, who had probably obtained the aid of provincial Roman moneyers, but whose currency exhibits a certain native rudeness: in his later coins he seems to have had more efficient assistance, and from the names of native artists on