ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE factured. We must make the same admission with respect to the dates when it was made. Yet even amid these uncertainties it remains a note- worthy and interesting feature in the Romano-British civihzation of our island. 6. Military Remains: The Ostorian Forts In the preceding sections we have discussed those Roman remains which may reasonably be connected with the settled and permanent lite of our district in Roman times. Before we conclude this article we have further to notice other Roman remains found within the county which do not come into the foregoing category. These are scattered objects, coins, urns and other small things which have nothing, so far as we know, to do with settled and permanent life. Many, perhaps most of them, are due to chance and isolated circumstances ; some, no doubt, are so imperfectly known that we miss their true significance. Neither kind can materially aid our conception of Roman Northamptonshire, and they will find their proper mention in the alphabetical list with which this article concludes. Two groups of items however deserve a fuller notice. The one is the series of camps or forts said to have been built by Ostorius Scapula along the Nene valley ; the other consists of two legionary tiles found respectively near the Foss and Ermine Street. The two are alike in several points. Both concern a transitory period in the history of Roman Britain and indeed the same period, that of the early conquest; they belong, in other words, to a temporary and not a permanent aspect of the land. Both again are abnormal features in Northamptonshire, where, as we have said above, no Roman troops were ordinarily posted. But they differ in a more important point. The Ostorian forts, though well known and often discussed, are purely imaginary. The legionary tiles, though seldom noticed, contribute, as I believe, a real addition to our knowledge of the Roman conquest. The legend of the Ostorian forts starts from a difficult passage in the Annals of Tacitus (xii. 31). Ostorius, says the historian, when he became governor of Britain in or after a.d. 47, found the land in great unrest. He therefore at once attacked and crushed the Britons who were actually in arms, disarmed the disloyal, and (as the one good manuscript has it) cunctaque castris antonam et Sahrinam Jiuvtos cohibere parat. This step, whatever it was, produced a rising of the Iceni in Norfolk, and at the conclusion of that Ostorius commenced operations in north Wales. The problem is to explain the words quoted in the last sentence. As given in the manuscript they are untranslatable. Conjectures of various sorts were proposed at very early dates. In the sixteenth century lustus Lipsius observed that Antona might be North- ampton — not an unnatural suggestion if one considers how the name of the town was often spelt at that time. He added that Northampton was a town not a river, and that he really did not know how to deal with the text of Tacitus. Camden however took up the idea of North- 213
