Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/210

 152 ox THE " BELGIC DITCHES," It will be seen that the Wansdike bends to the south, as if to avoid Aveburj, and approaches close to, but does not include, Bath. It seems reasonable to infer, that when the line of demarcation was drawn, the Dobuni insisted on the retention of their ancient temple, and of their hot baths ; and if this inference be a just one, another and a more important one seems naturally to follow. Assuming that the Belg« were thus excluded from Avebury, is it not likely that they would provide a " locus consecratus " at some central point within their own border — a place for their judicial assemblies, like the Gaulish temple, " in finibus Carnutum,^ quae regie totius Galliie media habetur 1 " May not Stonehenge have been the substitute so j)i'ovided ? There seem to be two opinions prevalent wdth respect to the date of this mysterious monument. There are antiquaries who maintain that it was built before the Christian era, at some period of great and undefined antiquity ; and others, who would postpone its erection to a period subsequent to the Roman occupation of the island. The first of these opinions is generally supported on the authority of a passage in Diodorus Siculus, which appears to have been taken from Hecatseus of Abdera, who flourished about three centuries before the Christian era. According to this authority, there was among the Hyperboreans a round temple dedicated to Apollo, and situated in an island " opposite Celtica." Our English antiquaries assume, that the word Celtica, in this passage, was used with the same meaning as by Strabo and his contemporaries, or, in other words, that it signified Gaul, and they conclude that the island was Britain, and the round temple Stonehenge, or Avebury, or the Rolrich circle, according to the particular hypothesis they are interested in supporting. SwecUsh anti- quaries give to Celtica a wider meaning, and as the ancients considered Scandinavia to be an island, they boldly claim the round temple of the Hyperboreans as Swedish property. Wessehng, in a sensible note, examines these chff"erent hypo- - Cses. B. G. 6. Does not the name of the great monastery which was after- Carnutes mean the people of Car-nut, in wards built in its neiglibourhooJ, were modern Welsh, Caer naudd, the City of known as the nawdd, or sanctuary, and ■ the Sanctuary ? In the discourse, which the that it w.is from this Welsh word that; writer delivered at Salisbury, on " the the Anglo-Saxons got their Xat-e, and j Early English Settlements in South also the title by which they designated Britain," one of the points he contended Ambrosias, viz., Natan hod. for was tlii?, tiiat both Stonehenge and