Fig. 2. Coins of the Iceni (Eceni). 



ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK 



Cssar, in describing his second British campaign, mentions five tribes 

 which ' surrendered,' the Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and 

 Cassi, and the context in which he mentions them makes it highly prob- 

 able that their territories lay to the north of the Thames and to the 

 north or west of what is now Essex. Beyond this nothing is recorded of 

 these tribes ; they may, indeed, have been petty peoples whose names 

 looked well on paper, but whose real importance was triiling. Celtic 

 philologists, however, think it possible that an original name Icenimagni 

 (or Ecenimagni) might have 

 been abbreviated by Casar into 

 Cenimagni and by later genera- 

 tions into Iceni. ^ Our next 

 traces of the tribe consist in 

 certain British silver coins in- 

 scribed ECE or ECEN (fig. 2), 

 which, along with other gold 

 and silver coins of similar types, 

 though different legends, have 

 been found at several sites in 

 Norfolk and Suffolk and probably date from the century which elapsed 

 between Cjesar and the definite Claudian conquest (b.c. 55^a.d. 43). 

 These coins plainly belonged to the currency of the Celtic tribe then 

 dwelling in and round Norfolk, and the assumption is easy and natural 

 that ECE and ecen stand for Eceni or Iceni.^ 



When the Roman conquest commenced, the Iceni became famous 

 for a little while. At first, as Tacitus relates, they took the Roman side, 

 and perhaps naturally. South-eastern Britain before a.d. 43 was in great 

 part subject to the sons and heirs of the Catuvellaunian chief Cunobeline, 

 but their rule was disputed and disliked, and to many Britons the Roman 

 legions came as deliverers from despotism. The Iceni were neighbours 

 of the Catuvellauni : if not their subjects, they may well have feared 

 subjection. Certainly they joined the Romans and thereby retained some 

 shadow of independence under the rule of their native princes. Four 

 or five years later they repented them. Irritated, as it seems, by some 

 general measure of disarmament enforced by the Romans, they headed a 

 rising. Naturally, they failed ; but they were allowed still to be ruled 

 by their native princes. Twelve years later, they rose again. Their 

 prince Prasutagus, dying, had bequeathed his private wealth to his two 

 daughters and the Emperor Nero. Such was the fashion of the time — 

 to satiate a greedy Emperor with a heavy legacy, lest he should confiscate 

 the whole fortune. Prasutagus hoped thus to save his kingdom for his 



1 Cssar, De Bella Gallico, 5. 21 ; Rhys, Celtic Britain (ed. 2) p. 287. The attempts to emend the 

 name by conjecturing Icenl Magnl (the Great Iceni) or Icenl Catigl or Icertl Regnt, or the like, are all 

 failures. Of the other tribes named, the Segontiaci have been connected with Silchester and the Bibroci 

 with Berkshire. But the former of these identifications is very dubious {Victoria County Hist, of Hamp- 

 shire, i. 273), and the latter, which rests only on the outward similarity of the names, is, according to 

 Mr. W. H. Stevenson, philologically most improbable. 



8 Evans, Ancient British Coins, chaps, xv., xxviii. The forms Eceni and Iceni seem philologically 

 interchangeable. 



285 



