Book L] THE ICENI COINS. 7 



expedient to place both his kingdom and family 

 beyond the reach of injury. How this arrangement 

 succeeded is well known ; the tyranny of the Romans 

 having brought about the sanguinary revolt under 

 Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, in which the 

 Iceni, in conjunction with the Trinobantes and other 

 tribes not accustomed as yet to the Roman yoke, 

 destroyed the Roman garrison town of Camulodunum 

 and some other Roman stations. No less than seventy 

 thousand of the Romans and their allies are said to 

 have been slaughtered before Suetonius Paulinus, the 

 Roman governor and general, was in a position to 

 engage with the insurgents. In the engagement, 

 however, which ensued, the defeat of the Britons was 

 complete, their army having been nearly annihilated, 

 and Boadicea driven to end her life by poison. From 

 this time forward there is no mention of the Iceni in 

 the pages of Roman history. 



Nearly all the gold and silver coins of the Iceni 

 bear on the reverses the figure of a horse. Many of 

 these horses, however, show a peculiarity in the pellets 

 on the shoulder, and the hairy or branched character 

 of their tails, which is confined to the Roman- British 

 coins of this district. The inscriptions on these coins, 

 as far as at present known, are ecen, ece, saemv, 

 AESV, anted, and cav (?) dvro. The first person 

 who suofSfested the attribution of. coins of this class to 

 the Iceni, was Sir Thomas Browne, the author of 

 "Pseudodoxia Epidemica." In his " Hydriotaphia ' 

 (p. 7, ed. 1669) he relates that at the two Caistors, 

 by Norwich and Yarmouth, " some British coynes of 



