38 
pass the test of severer scrutiny, would supply our country 
with a national type far more elegant and expressive than 
that which has so long enjoyed the same honour. 
He discovers in the figure the provincia Britannia personified, 
and finds, what certainly is strong support, the base of a 
statue, now unhappily lost, from the same locality, hearing a 
dedication to that divinity ; Britannice sanctcB P. Nickomedes 
Augg^ n. n. libertusB 
Let us now discuss the arguments supporting this view of 
the question, that are presented by the sculpture itself. The 
body-armour, it is true, is entirely Q-reek, or else copied from 
a Grecian prototype, hut the shield is neither the circular 
Hellenic oo-tt/?, nor the rectangular Boman scutum of the 
legionaries, nor the small roundi parma of the cavalry. There 
can he no doubt that it represents the great Gallic shield of 
wood if we compare it with those depicted on the arms of the 
Gauls in the combats with them, which form a frequent reverse 
of the consular denarii^ notably those of the gem Servilia, and 
which distinguished the Gallic nationality down to the close of 
the Empire, for Ammian notices how Julian’s Gauls were 
enabled by their means to swim across the broad Euphrates. 
The coin-types shew that the distinctive feature of these shields, 
(like doors, Ovpeoi as Diodorus Siculus calls them), was the large, 
hemi-spherical imiho in the centre, intended to protect the hand 
which wielded it, and which is equally conspicuous in the 
monument now under consideration. But the part that betrays 
a harhanc origin even more unmistakably than the Celtic shield, 
is the sword, whose pommel reaches to the left armpit of the 
warrior, whilst the sheath descends as low as his knees. 
Entirely dissimilar to the short and wide Roman ensis, it is 
the veritable spatlia of the Gauls, “ equal in length to the darts 
of other nations,” as the same Diodorus remarked in the days 
of Augustus (Hist. V. 30). It is, undoubtedly, an example of 
the “ enormes et sine mucrone gladii^^ which Agricola encountered 
in the hands of the Britons, and which were used for slashing 
at the heads and limbs of their opponents (Bolyb. Hist. ii. 33), 
according to the regular Gallic system as described by Polybius. 
-For the more civilised pail: of the natives of the island differed 
