ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
569 
belonged to AUectus himself, and may have been buried and cast 
away at the time when his retreat from the coast was inter- 
cepted by Asclepiodotus, the Pr?etorian prefect of Constantius, 
and when the engagement took place in which Allectus lost his 
life. Constantius was made Caesar by the Emperor Diocletian, 
A.D. 292, four years before his invasion of Britain, while 
Carausius was living ; and nothing is more probable, than that 
during that interval coins struck with the effigy of Constantius 
might obtain currency in Britain. 
My own conclusion is, that in the basin of Woolmer Forest, 
and in the neighbouring ridges and hills, we have probably the 
scene of important events, of which a narrative, strictly con- 
temporaneous, has been preserved to us, in the panegyric of 
the orator Eumenius, pronounced in honour of Constantius 
Cfesar, on his recovery of Britain. 
Carausius, a native of the country between the Meuse and the 
Scheldt, of the same Belgic race by which, as early as the time 
of Julius Caesar, Hampshire and the adjoining maritinie parts of 
England were peopled, and a man of high reputation in naval 
warfare, was intrusted b}^ Diocletian, soon after his succession 
to the empire, with the defence of the northern coast of 
Gaul fromx the incursions, then already frequent, of Saxon and 
Scandinavian corsairs. This he did successfully ; but, being 
accused of permitting the corsairs to commit depredations, with 
the view of appropriating the spoil, when recaptured, to his own 
use, Maximian ordered him to be put to death. Carausius then 
(A.D. 286) declared himself independent, and established an 
empire of his own in Britain ; retaining also Boulogne, and 
other neighbouring places in Gaul. To Britain he carried over 
v/ith him the fleet under his command, which had been equipped 
for the defence of the opposite coast ; and he built other ships of 
war in British ports, manning them with merchant seamen from 
various parts of Gaul, and with fighting men, attracted to his 
service from different barbarous nations, whom he instructed in 
naval as well as military warfare. The Eoman legion, or legions, 
stationed in Britain, acknowdedged his sovereignty ; which seems, 
from traces still remaining in various parts of the island, north 
as v/ell as south, to have extended throughout Great Britain. 
