A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE are the scattered coins, potsherds, fibulas, and other objects, found sporadi- cally, and often due to chance circumstances. These we shall treat in an alphabetical index with bibliographical notes attached. But before com- mencing this index, it seems desirable to notice two inscribed stones which demand a rather longer notice than the index conveniently allows. 1. In the latter part of the seventeenth century an inscribed altar was dug up somewhere ' in the grounds belonging to Haddon House ' and, indeed, according to a local belief, on the west bank of the Derwent near the present high road. It was taken to Haddon and has been there ever since. It is a plain block of local stone, 46 inches tall by 19 inches wide, bearing eight lines of three-inch letters (fig. 45 on plate). The reading, though faint, seems fairly certain. 1 Deo Marti Eradacae Q. Sittius Caedlia iis praef(ectus) coh(ortis) I Aqultano(rmn) vo(fum) s(ohif). ' To the god Mars Braciaca, erected by Q. Sittius Caecilianus, praefect of the First Cohort of Aquitani.' Mars Braciaca is presumably a British deity, known to the natives as Braciaca and identified by the Romans with Mars. Whether his native name be derived from some place-name (as Horsley thought) or from some other source, as for instance the Celtic word for malt and beer, cannot easily be decided. The First Cohort of Aquitani was stationed at Brough (p. 207). From Brough there is an easy road to Haddon along the Derwent valley, and thus it was, perhaps, that a commander of the Brough garrison came over and erected this altar. But we must refrain from speculating on his reason for erecting it. Possibly enough there existed near Haddon a local shrine of Braciaca, but of this we have no other evidence. 2. The second inscription was found about 1792, a little west of Wirksworth. Workmen preparing for plantation a large barrow called Abbot's Low, on rising ground near Hopton, discovered in it a sepulchre consisting of an urn of coarse baked earth, full of burnt bones, and covered by a piece of soft yellowish freestone measuring 20 by 30 inches. On this stone, worn lettering was detected. The stone has since been lost, but the lettering is said to have been z : / / / / / CELL PRAE C'HI LV BRIT The interpretation of this fragment is obviously uncertain. We seem to have a prae(fect) of some coh(ort), but it is difficult to say what the cohort was. Hiibner, reading iv for LV, suggested the Cohors iv Brittonum. 1 First published in Gibson's Camden (ed. 1695), p. 497, some time, apparently, after its dis- covery ; later by Horsley, p. 318; Pegge, Coins of Cunobelm (London 1766), p. 17; Pilkington, i. 420 ; Lysons, p. ccv, and others ; Htlbner, Corp. Insc. Lot. vii. 176. I have myself examined it, and have to thank Mr. Henry Rye for help in doing so. In line 4 the first letter is a short-tailed Q ; of the third and fourth letters only the top of an I and the top of a T survive, but Sittius (conjectured first by Hiibner) seems reasonable. 2 Rooke, Archeeokgia, xii. (1796), p. 3 : hence all other writers, and my fig. 42. 252
