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despoiled place of Dniidic worship but at Stanton Drew, and where 

 was this new temple in honour of Claudius which so vexed the 

 Britons, this Templum Claudii 1" " Why," says Mr. Skinner, " at 

 Temple Cloud, to be sure," and a happier hit could hardly be made. 



Before Suetonius could relieve the garrisons, London and Verulam, 

 as well as Camulodunum, were destroyed by the barbarians. The 

 mention of the Triuobantes, and of these towns, points to the east, 

 and now we come to a much disputed passage of Tacitus. Before 

 the ruin of Camulodunum presages were observed, and among them 

 a mirage in the " a^stuary," the Severn, says Mr. Skinner, the 

 Thames, say the rest of the world. The passage, as it was at first 

 read, and so is found in MSS. in the Bodleian, Harleian, and other 

 libraries, as well as in the early printed editions, rans thus, " visamq 

 speciem in sestuar notam esse subversee colonise," but the new 

 reading, which is now almost universally accepted, is the change of 

 " ajstuar notam esse" into " aestuario tamessse." This correction 

 owes as much, perhaps, to its agreement with Dion, as to the intrinsic 

 evidence of its truth, and it of course found no favour with Mr. 

 Skinner, who condemned the passage in Dion itself as a mere 

 augmentation by Xiphilin. The geographers, however, are all 

 against the western Camulodunum. Ptolemy and the Eaveuna 

 geographer mention Camulodunum as the capital of the Triuobantes, 

 who, according to Dion, lived near the Thames. Eichard of 

 Cirencester, with the other Itinerary, places a Camulodunum 

 between London and Norwich, and says " Ibi erat Templum 

 Claudii, Arx triumphalis et Imago Victoriae Dese." Witb charac- 

 teristic impetuosity, Mr. Skinner discards the mutilated old thino-s, 

 and as for Eichard, his work is nothing but a forgery of Stukeley's, 

 and if genuine would be of no authority. 



There is little to be added to the story, and in telling it to his 

 friend Mr. Douglas, author of the Nsenia Britannica, he says, " if 

 my foundations are faulty, teU me in time, for I do not wish my 

 Camalodunum to become a Caraboo," an allusion nowadays scarcely 

 understood even in Bath. This was his truthful spirit, and his 

 hypothesis must not be called vanissimum mendacium, as Buchanan 

 said of Boece's attempt to place Camulodunum at Camelon, on the 

 Carron, in Scotland, 



