198 On the Roman Conquest of Southern Britain, 
In the year 43, nearly a hundred years after Cesar’s first invasion, 
an army of some fifty thousand or sixty thousand men was brought 
over by iA. Plautius, an officer high in command in the neighbouring 
province of Germany—an expedition which was honoured by the 
presence for sixteen days of the Emperor himself, who joined it later 
in the season. This number is made up by counting the soldiers of 
the four legions which are known to have served in the campaign 
as six thousand apiece (including one hundred and twenty cavalry 
in each), and adding to them a “ vexillation ” or detachment of a 
thousand men from at least one other legion, the VIIIth Augusta. 
This gives us twenty-five thousand legionaries, mainly from the IInd 
Augusta, [Xth Hispana, XI Vth Gemina, and XXth Valeria Victrix, 
and adding to it an equal number of auxiliary forces we obtain a 
total of fifty thousand. The soldiers serving in the fleet, &c., would 
naturally make up the figures to the sixty thousand combatants, at 
which Hiibner reckons the whole number. In this army served 
two future Emperors, Galba and Vespasian, the former as one of 
the suite of the Emperor, the latter as legatus of the IInd Augustan 
Legion, having his brother Flavius Sabinus serving under him. 
The question is at once naturally raised where this expedition 
landed, and I think we may plausibly suggest that it was in South- 
ampton Water, at the mouth of the Anton, or Test. IRfso this port 
was no doubt chosen as the one nearest to the city of the Atrebates, 
Calleva, or Silchester, to which Verica would naturally direct the 
invaders. I should be glad to have more information as to the 
name Anton, and its probable connection with Andover, near which 
it flows. I would ask, however, as one conscious of defective local 
knowledge, whether it is not probable that Antona was originally 
the name for Andover, formed on a Celtic basis like Dertona in 
Cisalpine Gaul, and that Hampton Shire and Southampton are only 
Saxonising forms of the same old British word, having in reality 
nothing to do with either “ham” or “ton,” but merely passing 
into them as the nearest forms accessible in the language of the 
Teutonic conquerors of later date? 
In any case I presume that the Anton river is probably the same 
as the river Antona referred to in a well-known passage of Tacitus’ 
