Particularly in regard to its influence on the County of Wilts. 199 



Annals (xii., 81), describing the action of Ostorius Scapula, the 

 successor of Aulus Plautius in the government. You will pardon 

 me for a short digression on this important text. After touching on 

 the tumults which awaited Ostorius on his arrival, and the prompt 

 measures which it was necessary for him to take, Tacitus goes on to 

 say, according to the MSS., " detrahere arma suspectis cunctaque 

 castris Antonam et Sabrinam fiuvios cohibere parat." These words 

 are obviously not good grammar as they stand, and require some 

 emendation. Ritter and others alter Antonam to Avonam, following 

 Camden's Aufonam, because they do not know the name of so com- 

 paratively insignificant a stream as the Anton, and insert usque 

 after Avonam. Halm conjectures cis before the first river name. I 

 myself think cis more probable, as more likely to have dropped out 

 than usque. If the Anton was the first river met with by Claudius' 

 expedition, the prominence given to it is easily explained. This is 

 interesting by itself, but it is even more interesting, in view of the 

 question raised about ten years ago as to the genuineness of the 

 Annals, to notice the use apparently made of this passage by the 

 geographer Ptolemy, who lived about a generation later than Tacitus. 

 In his description of the south coast of Britain, after noticing the 

 outlets of the Kenion, Tamarus, Isaca and Alaunus, which may, 

 perhaps, represent Falmouth, Plymouth, Exmouth and Axmouth or 

 Weymouth, he mentions the " Great Harbour " (probably the Solent 

 and the inlets generally at the back of the Isle of Wight), and then 

 the mouth of the river Trisanton. No one has been able to identify 

 this curious name, and I therefore suggest that the tris in it is 

 simply a duplication of the -tris in castris in the sentence of 

 Tacitus, " castris Antonam et Sabrinam fiuvios." If the original text 

 castris cis antonam was corrupted to castris trisantonam, we could well 

 understand both the omission of the cis in our present MSS. and the 

 origin of Ptolemy's mistake. Such a blunder might seem almost im- 

 possible, were it not that we have a very similar and more ludicrous 

 one already recognised in Ptolemy. In Tacitus' account of the Frisian 

 rebellion occurs the sentence, "ad sua tutanda digressis rebellious " 

 (Ann., iv., 73, 1), "the rebels having dispersed to protect their own 

 homes." Ptolemy evidently took this for the name of a place, 



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