By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



185 



of the hill. 1 Now it is manifest that if this opinion is correct, 

 Silbury must be of anterior date to the formation of the Roman 

 road, and consequently prior to the occupation of this country by 

 the Romans. Moreover, this is not a solitary instance of the 

 respect with which the Romans in Britain treated barrows, (a 

 respect the more marked from their general unwillingness to deviate 

 for any consideration from the invariable straight line,) for the 

 course of the Roman road from Old Sarum to Ad Axium, (opposite 

 Brean Down, the Port on the Severn,) diverges in like manner, 

 as Sir Richard Hoare 2 has shown, and as Mr. Scarth has pointed out 

 in his able paper on " Ancient Sepulchral Tumuli." 3 But, not- 

 withstanding what Mr. Rickman and " Cyclops Christianus " may 

 have said in disparagement of its age, it is probable that Silbury was 

 already of considerable antiquity long before the Roman road was 

 planned. By some it has been held to be the work of the Belgae, 

 those marauding invaders, who, landing on the Southern coasts, 

 gradually penetrated farther and farther inland: but if the Wans- 

 dike was (as is generally allowed) the fourth and last of the great 

 boundary ditches which they formed as they increased their 

 territory and advanced more and more into the heart of the country 

 from the South, and if it defines the most Northern limit which the 

 Belgic kingdom ever attained ; it is obvious that they never reached 

 so far as Silbury, which lies two miles or more to the North of 

 Wansdike; and even if they sometimes passed their border, it is 

 not to be supposed they would have selected the enemy's country, 

 as the site of so gigantic a work. 4 Again, the absence of all relics, 

 and the blank results of the tunnel in 1849 have been adduced by 

 some in conclusive proof of the non-sepulchral origin of Silbury : 

 but I think that those who hold the opposite view, and still main- 

 tain their belief in the existence of interments therein, may fairly 

 argue from the same grounds in favour of its great antiquity: for 



1 See Stukeley's Maps of the Roman road curving round Silbury in his work 

 on Abury, Tab. viii., p. 15, Tab. xxvii., p. 52. 



2 Ancient Wilts, ii., 39. 

 3 Page 6. 



4 Sir R. C. Hoare's Ancient Wilts, ii, 16, 18 : et seq : Stukeley's Itinerarium 

 Curiosum, i. 134, 181. Archaeological Journal, xvi. 157. 



