331 



The Ancient Wiltshire Dijhes, 



in Wilts. Bokerlcy Dyke — the dyke immediately north of Old 

 Sarum, anciently called Wond* die, and now as Under-ditch giving 

 name to one of the Wiltshire hundreds — and Wansdyke. To these 

 Warton added two others found in Wiltshire, viz., Grimsdyke, 

 south of Salisbury, and the Old Dyke that runs over Salisbury Plain 

 to the North of Heytesbury. Neither of these authorities, however, 

 points out the districts which they suppose to have been marked out 

 by these boundary-lines, and the proximity of the lines to each other 

 is adduced as a proof of the desperate resistance which the Belgae 

 had to surmount before they could effect their conquest. But, as 

 Dr. Guest observes, "the resistance must have been desperate in- 

 deed, which contested the possession of a few miles of worthless 

 down land ; and the love of property equally strong, which could 

 think such an acquisition worthy of being secured at the expense of 

 so much labour/'' 



But the question will naturally be asked, "Who were these 

 Belgse ? 33 — and " What authority is there for the assumption that 

 they overspread the south of Britain in successive waves of conquest, 

 and dug these great dykes as boundary-lines to the territory they 

 acquired from time to time ?'" — In answer to the former question 

 we reply, that they were, according to Caesar, for some centuries 

 before Christ the most energetic and powerful — and among half- 

 civilized races this means the most aggressive — of the Gaulish tribes. 

 Further we learn, from the same authority, that the "maritime 

 portion of Britain in his time was inhabited by those, who for the 

 sake of booty and war, passed over from Belgium (ex Belgio tran- 

 sierunt), and that this people, in almost every case, retained the names 

 of the native states from which they had migrated to this island, 

 where they made war, and settled, and began to till the land." 

 Such words at all events imply a series of predatory inroads, some 

 of which were followed by Belgic settlements. Well then, we know 

 from Ptolemy, that the territory occupied in his time (that is c. A.D. 

 120, some 65 years after Caesar) by the Belgse, comprehended large 

 portions of Hants, Wilts, and Somerset ; for he mentions as their 

 towns Venta (Winchester), Ischalis (Ilchester), and vlara Oep/xa, 

 better known as Aquas Calidse (Bath). As these successive lines of 



