Page:Sussex Archaeological Collections, volume 6.djvu/131

 The name is likewise absent from the small surviving fragment of the Peutingerian Tables. The Notitia simply states that the commander of the cohort of the Abulci was stationed at Anderida, without further intimation of the locality of the place, than that it belonged to the defensive works of the "Limes Saxonicus per Britanniam." The anonymous geographer of Ravenna mentions Anderesio, or Andereliomiba, by which it is supposed that Anderida is intended, and this probably is the fact; but these scanty notices comprise all the authentic information, which those documents afford on the subject. There is another professed authority, which I would gladly believe to be deserving of confidence, because its testimony would go far towards definitively settling the point. I allude to the work first made known and printed about a hundred years ago as the composition of Richard of Cirencester, a monk of Westminster in the fourteenth century. But such grave suspicion has long attached to this production, that I would on no account place any reliance upon it, greatly preferring to leave the cause now advocated with some appearance of weakness, rather than try to strengthen it by knowingly adducing any evidence, the reputation of which is not, like that of "the wife of Cæsar," untainted. Still I readily own myself indebted to Bertram's fabrication (which I sincerely believe the above-named work to be) for a suggestion, which I will proceed to offer as merely a conjecture.

That Limme in Kent is the site of a Roman station will be undisputed, more especially after the excavations so successfully carried on there in 1850. At Pevensey again we have in Sussex the remains of a fortress, which very few deny to be also Roman. Now between these two important garrisons there must of necessity have been some regularly established line of communication, unless the Romans departed both from every principle of military science, and from what we know to have been their constant practice in other instances. The direct distance between the extreme points, as a bird might fly, appears to be thirty-two or thirty-three miles, while, allowing for the very numerous and often great inequalities of the surface, actually it must be almost forty miles. Where such a line of communication passed has never yet been ascertained, perhaps not even sought after, but still existing traces of a Roman road