Page:Notices by the Rev. T. Surridge ...of Roman inscriptions discovered at High Rochester, Risingham and Rudchester, in Northumberland ... (IA noticesbyrevtsur00surr).pdf/28



—A good deal of difference in opinion has arisen respecting the deciphering of the inscription on the Roman Altar lately found at Rochester, in this county. A Southern Member of the Archæological Institute adopts and defends the reading of the two northern antiquaries, and we think he is perfectly warranted in doing so; it must be obvious to every one conversant in those matters that their reading is the correct one. What is more probable than that the Varduli should be mentioned in an inscription on a Roman Altar at Rochester, the Bremenium of the Romans, since we learn from undoubted* authority that the first cohort of the Varduli, a people from the foot of the Pyrenees in Spain, were established at Bremenium? We may here notice that it was a policy pursued with great steadiness by the Roman Conquerors to transplant colonies from one nation to another, under the name of auxiliaries, thus making a gradual amalgamation of the different peoples who composed the empire, and establishing effective defences without exhausting the central force. Even with our present impefectimperfect [sic] information we can trace the parcelling out of Britain among colonies of almost every people who had been subdued by the Roman Arms. The Notitia Imperii, composed under Theodosius the younger, gives us a long list of the auxiliary nations who held towns and stations throughout Britain. In this list we find that Segedunum (Wallsend) was occupied by Lingones from Belgium; Pons Ælii (Newcastle) by a people called Cornovii; Habitancum *(Risingham) and the next station to Bremenium, by the Vangiones, a people from the banks of the Rhine; and Bremenium (Rochester), as we noticed before, by the first cohort of the Varduli, a people from the foot of the Pyrenees in Spain. Now, in the third line of the inscription we meet with the letters, M, which by the two northern antiquaries is translated "of the first cohort of the Varduli," and when we find that this cohort was established at Bremenium, where shall we find a more reasonable rendering of the line? But Dr. Surridge would make the line stand thus—"Cohortis; Quartæ, Aram Diis Universis, Manibus," and in the fifth line he makes E M to stand for exemiæ