61 



have stretched from South Wales into Gloucestershire § the ten-itory assigned 

 by Ptolemy to the Dobuni. Whatever their boundaries, their consequence 

 aud influence must have been considerable, as may be inferred both from their 

 provokin- Ostorius to measures of repression, and from the nature of one of 

 the measures, which, as Tacitus tells us, he used (among others) to effect such 

 repression. He established a Roman Colony at Camulodunum (near Maldon) 

 in the country of Trinobantes (h.e. Hertford and Essex) ; and this to overawe 

 the Silures, a colony in the east to hold in check a nation of the far-west. The 

 clue to this seeming paradox is that Caractacus was the son of Cunobelin, 

 King of the Trinobantes, a chief who seems to have held an extended sway 

 over the south and centre of Britain, and to have been regarded as paramount 

 in arms by the Celtic races on the Severn and beyond it. So that this colony 

 which Ostorius planted was designed to punish at the centre of Cunobelin's or 

 Caractacus's sway the protracted resistance of the outskirts and extremities. 

 The distance betwixt Maldon and this side of Severn becomes less of a diffi'- 

 culty if we recoUect this connection of east and west by kinship and common 

 sovereignty. 



At the time, however, with wliich we are concerned, Ostoriu. had been con- 

 stramed to direct his operations more prouoimcedly against the Silures, who 

 were both themselves high-spirited beyond their neighbours, and furthermore 

 emboldened by the valour and tried prowess of their leader. Caractacus, it 

 appears, had led out his tribesmen far beyond their native mountains into t)ie ' 

 opener country, which is now Herefordshire and the vaUey of the Wye. He 

 had laid waste the fields of the Roman settlers on the Severn and the Lower 

 A^ on, 11 that Avon which flows through Somersetshire and Wilts. Ostorius 

 collected his contingents from his various encampments in the Cotswold': 

 crossed the Severn, and pressed the forces of Caractacus first to their outer 

 hne of defences on the Malvern Range, and then, when driven from these with 

 gi-eat loss of men and spirit upon the camps of Whitborne and Thombury in 

 the Bromyard and Leominster district, upon Croft Ambrey and upon Wapley 

 ITiere were doubtless other points of resistance, probably other points of pur- 

 suit and retreat besides and connected wth these. Tradition associates Dinedor 

 Camp mth the same period, and connects its local name of " Oyster Hill " 

 with the famous Roman general. But from each of the fortresses named tliere 

 IS more or less ground for supposing the Britons to have been driven and this 

 m the order given. The gate out of which in confused disarray the stormed 

 Silures poured forth from the Croft Ambrey, when they could hold it no lonc^er 

 IS just where we should expect it, if the next point to be made was Wapley' 



II Tacitus Ann., xii. c. 31. 



