ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



by) the First Cohort of Aquitani, under Julius Verus, legatui Augusti pro pnetore 

 (= governor of Britain), and under the superintendence of Capitonius Fuscus, praefect 

 of the cohort.' 



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 IN S3; 



FIG. 14. RESTORATION OF INSCRIBED SLAB FOUND AT B ROUGH. 



The emperor is Pius, who reigned A.D. 138-161. The Cohors I. 

 Aquitanorum presumably garrisoned Brough when the slab was erected. 

 It is known, from a military 'diploma,' to have been in Britain in 

 A.D. 124, and it has left an undated memorial of itself at Bakewell in the 

 shape of an altar to Mars Braciaca (p. 252) ; it also is named on a dateless 

 fragment from Hadrian's Wall. 1 The governor Julius Verus is also 

 known. His name occurs in full on a slab found in the Tyne between 

 Newcastle and Gateshead in 1903, and it is imperfectly preserved on an 

 inscription at Birrens dated 158 A.D., as well as on a fragment from 

 Netherby, assigned by good judges to the middle of the second century. 

 He is also mentioned as governing Syria about A.D. 163 5, and Dr. Ritterling 

 has acutely connected him with a man whose earlier career is set forth 

 on a Dalmatian inscription. 2 



His governorship of Britain appears to have coincided with trouble 

 and disturbance. The Newcastle inscription which names him refers 

 also to special reinforcements sent over from the Rhine. The inscrip- 

 tions of Brough and Birrens, and probably also of Netherby, though in 

 iform mere dedications to an emperor, are in reality evidences of serious 

 /activity probably building or rebuilding in the forts concerned. We 

 may perhaps connect this activity with certain measures taken during 

 the reign of Pius against the Brigantes, the powerful hill tribe of what 

 is now northern England. The precise date of the measures is not 

 recorded. But the only other military operations known to have been 

 carried out in Britain under Pius, the wall building of Lollius Urbicus 

 between Forth and Clyde in 1434, He very far north of the Brigantian 



1 Corp. Insc. Lot. vii. 176, 6203, 1195. 



s See Dessau, Prosopogivphia (incerti, no. 19). 



207 



