ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 387 



a quantity of money in one spot, and the burying and casting 

 away of another quantity (perhaps more valuable) in the 

 water within a quarter of a mile of the same spot (on both 

 sides of which water tumuli now appear), seems to tell a tale 

 of panic and flight. If we ask how so large a number and 

 variety of coins, thus hidden and cast away, came to be 

 brought together (including, as they do, some so imperfectly 

 minted that they can hardly have been issued for circulation), 

 it occurs to me, as a not improbable supposition, that they 

 may have been hastily collected and carried off from some 

 station in which there was a military chest, and perhaps also 

 a mint, either to provide for the pay of a retreating army, or 

 to prevent them from falling into the hands of an approaching 

 enemy. The Roman Clausen turn (now Bittern^ near Soutli- 

 ampton) was a garrison town, in which there was also a mint, 

 in the times of Carausius and Allectus, some of whose coins, 

 found at Blackmoor, bear the letter C on the exergue, which 

 I understand to be the minfcmark of that place. The latest in 

 date of all the coins found (if one, which may have become 

 casually mixed with those of this hoard, and which is at least 

 seventy years later, is excluded) are ninety of Allectus and a 

 •single coin of Constantius Chlorus — of which the legend is 

 " FL. VAL. CONSTANTIUS NOB. C." (Flavius Valerius 

 Constantius Nobilis Caesar), and on the reverse, " VIRTUS 

 AUGrGr." (Virtus Augustorum), with the device of Hercules 

 leaning on his club and holding a bow, with the lion's skin 

 over his arm — plainly one of his early coins, before his 

 accession to the empire. The date, therefore, of their deposit 

 cannot have been earlier than the reign of Allectus ; and if it, 

 had been later than the reconque'st of Britain by Constantius, 

 it is not probable that only one coin of that prince would have 

 been found. 



On the other hand, there would be nothing in the occur- 

 rence among this treasure even of several coins of Con- 

 stantius, while only Caesar, inconsistent with the hypothesis 

 that it may have belonged to Allectus himself, and may have 

 been buried and cast away at the time when his retreat from 

 the coast was intercepted by Asclepiodotus, the Praetorian 



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