Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/530

 508 APPENDIX and the notice of Jordanes shows that its proximity is not implied by the name " Catalaunian Plains," for Maurica might have been at the other extremity. Setting aside Idatius, whose statement is discredited by the words "not far from Metz," we find the other notices agreeing in the designation of the battle- field as the Mauriac Plain, or a place named Maurica, and one of them gives the precise distance from Troyes. The name Maurica, Mauriac, has Deen identified with great probability with Mery (on Seine), about twenty miles from Troyes. There seems therefore every likelihood that the battle was fought between Tro.ves and Slery, and the solution, for which Mr. Hodgkin well argues (Italy, i. p. 143-5), is confirmed, as he observes, by the strategical importance of Troyes, which was at the centre of many roads. An interesting discovery was made in 1842 at the village of Pouan, about 10 miles from Mery-on-Seine. A skeleton was found with a two-edged sword and a cutlass, both adorned with gold, and a number of gold ornaments, one of them a ring with the inscription HEVA. They are the subject of a memoir by M. Peigne Delacourt (1860) who claimed the grave as the tomb of the Visigothic king Theodoric. See Hodgkin {ih. i. 140). In any case the remains may well be connected with the great battle. ABERDEEN UNrVERSrTY PRESci.