ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



201 



belonged to Allectus himself, and may have been buried and cast 

 away at the time when his retreat from the coast was inter- 

 cepted by Asclepiodotus, the Praetorian prefect of Constantius, 

 and when the engagement took place in which Allectus lost his 

 life. Constantius was made Cjesar by the Emperor Diocletian, 

 A.D. 292, four years before his invasion of Britain, while 

 Carausius was living ; and nothing is more probable, than that 

 during that interval coins struck with the effigy of Constantius 

 might obtain currency in Britain. 



My own conclusion is, that in the basin of Woolmer Forest, 

 and in the neighbouring ridges and hills, we have probably the 

 scene of important events, of which a narrative, strictly con- 

 temporaneous, has been preserved to us, in the panegyric of 

 the orator Eumenius, pronounced in honour of Constantius 

 Cresar, on his recovery of Britain. 



Carausius, a native of the country between the Meuse and the 

 Scheldt, of the same Belgic race by which, as early as the time 

 of Julius Csesar, Hampshire and the adjoining maritime parts of 

 England were peopled/and a man of high reputation in naval 

 warfare, was intrusted by Diocletian, soon after his succession 

 to the empire, with the defence of the northern coast of 

 Gaul from the incursions, then already frequent, of Saxon and 

 Scandinavian corsairs. This he did successfully ; but, being 

 accused of permitting the corsairs to commit depredations, with 

 the view of appropriating the spoil, when recaptured, to his own 

 use, Maximian ordered him to be put to death. Carausius then 

 (A.D. 286) declared himself independent, and established an 

 empire of his own in Britain ; retaining also Boulogne, and 

 other neighbouring places in Gaul. To Britain he carried over 

 with him the fleet under his command, which had been equipped 

 for the defence of the opposite coast ; and he built other ships of 

 war in British ports, manning them with merchant seamen from 

 various parts of Gaul, and with fighting men, attracted to his 

 service from different barbarous nations, whom he instructed in 

 naval as well as military warfare. The Eoman legion, or legions, 

 stationed in Britain, acknowledged his sovereignty ; which seems, 

 from traces still remaining in various parts of the island, north 

 as well as south, to have extended throughout Great Britain. 



