MITHRAS AND THE ROMAN WALL. 
123 
Along the course of the whole fortification, at an interval of 
about a mile, were erected Castles, and at a further interval of four 
or five miles are Stations. These stations were military cities, and 
it is in these the altars and inscribed stones which occur in such 
abundance are mostly found. They are uniformly quadrangular, 
enclosing a space of from three to six acres, surrounded by a stone 
wall and a fosse. They were evidently intended as places of refuge 
while the wall was being constructed. 
From the altars found in the stations we are able to gather by 
what cohort they were occupied ; and in the Notitia, or Army List, 
we have the names of the stations occupied by certain cohorts 
given, so that we are able to restore these names with accuracy. 
The sixty-ninth section of this work contains a list of prefects and 
tribunes under command of the Duke of Britain ; and the portion 
of the work in which we are interested is headed, " Item per lineam 
vatti"* 
When therefore in the ruins of a station inscribed stones are 
found bearing the name of a cohort, we may assume by reference 
to the Notitia that the place where this cohort is stationed is the 
name of the place of the inscribed stone. 
As may be supposed from the various nationalities occupying the 
stations we have different objects of worship attested by the altars 
found along the wall ; hence we find not only the Eoman deities, 
Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, Minerva, and so on, but Phoenician Astarte, 
the Syrian Virgo, and the Persian Mithras. 
The lecturer then proceeded to speak of the worship of Mithras 
in the Eoman empire, and the introduction of this cultus from its 
Persian birthplace into the less polished nations of the West ; 
making special reference to the traces of Mithraic worship found in 
connection with the wall. 
* See page 47, the "Notitia Imperii," composed about the time of Theo- 
dosius the Younger, before the departure of the Romans from Britain. 
