about which it adds very few details.  But in the case of Britain it notes the municipal rank of the various coloniae, and it further appends tribal names to nine or ten town-names, which are thus distinguished from all other British place-names.  For example, we have Venta Belgarum (Winchester), not Venta simply; Corinium Dobunorum (Cirencester), not Corinium simply.  The towns thus specially marked out are just those towns which are also declared by their actual remains to have been the chief country towns of Roman Britain.  This coincidence can hardly be an accident.  We may infer that the towns to which the Ravennas appends tribal names were the cantonal capitals of the districts of Roman Britain, and that a list of them, perhaps mutilated and imperfect, has been preserved by some chance in this late writer.  In other words, the larger part of Roman Britain was divided up into districts corresponding to the territories of the Celtic tribes; each had its capital, and presumably its magistrates and senate, as the above-mentioned inscription shows that the Silures had at Venta Silurum.  We may suppose, indeed, that the district magistrates—­the county council, as it would now be called—­were also the magistrates of the country town.  The same cantonal system, then, existed here as in northern Gaul.  Only, it was weaker in Britain.  It could not impose tribal names on the towns, and it went down easily when the Empire fell.  In Gaul, Lutetia Parisiorum became Parisiis and is now Paris, and Nemetacum Atrebatum became Atrebatis and is now Arras.  In Britain, Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) remained Calleva, so far as we know, till it perished altogether in the fifth century.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Found at Venta Silurum (Caerwent) in 1903:  ... leg. legi[i] Aug. proconsul(i) provinc.  Narbonensis, leg.  Aug. pr. pr. provi.  Lugudunen(sis):  ex decreto ordinis respubl(ica) civit(atis) Silurum—­a monument erected by the cantonal senate of the Silures to some general of the Second legion at Isca Silurum, twelve miles from Caerwent—­perhaps to Claudius Paulinus, early in third century (Athenaeum, Sept. 26, 1903; Archaeologia, lix. 120; Eph. ix. 1012).  Other inscriptions mention a civis Cantius, a civitas Catuvellaunorum and the like, but their evidence is less distinct.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 20.  INSCRIPTION FOUND AT CAERWENT (VENTA SILURUM) MENTIONING A DECREE OF THE SENATE OF THE CANTON OF SILURES.]

[Footnote 2:  Icinos in Itin.  Ant. 474. 6 may well be Venta Icenorum (Victoria Hist. of Norfolk, i. 286, 300).]

[Footnote 3:  Canterbury may seem an exception.  But its name comes ultimately from the Early English form of Cantium, not from the Cantii.  In the south-west and in Wales, tribal names like Dumnonii (Devonshire), Demetae, Ordovices, have lingered on in one form or another, and, according to Professor Rhys, Bernicia is derivable from Brigantes.  But these cases differ widely from the Gaulish instances.]