Samuel Birch

“ Those who have to deal with harmonized barbarian names, will readily conceive with Menage's joke upon hippos and cheval, how they are bien changés en passant. As the name of Tasciovanus is not mentioned among the kings who came to Augustus, as Cunobelin died early in the reign of Claudius, and his sons had commenced their political intrigues at the time of Caligula, Tasciovanus must have lived in the age of Tiberius. His coins, which have been confounded by writers with those of his son Cunobelin, are of rather a ruder character ”

“ The great prevalence of gold as a material during the Celtic period, for the formation of objects of personal adornment, leads us to conjecture that the Odiham buckle may be an Anglo-Roman or Celto-Roman work of art. ”

“ While, however, in the Hindhu religion, [8] the god rides on his sacred animal, and in the Assyrian and Phœnician creed stands upon it, and among the later Greeks it draws his chariot, in Egypt the animal was totally detached, and accompanied his processions or gave his oracles. The reason of this animal worship was very obscure to the Greeks, who were of course struck with it, and made certain inquiries into the causes. The popular legends informed them that the gods assumed the forms of animals to escape the wickedness of mankind ”

“ The first English antiquary who published the coins of Cunobelin, was Camden, who to the honour of his sagacity assigned them to England, but conjectured that they were struck expressly for the payment of the Roman tribute; that those with the horse, hog, tree, and ear of corn respectively, were destined as the payment vice cattle, forest and corn lands ”

“ I do not propose to consider here the various readings of all the epigraphical coins of the British series, but there is one set, found in Yorkshire, which has received so extravagant an interpretation that it is necessary to shew what the reading is; they are coins of electrum formed by the union of gold and copper, and of very rude fabric. On the obverse across the field is VO/SI LI/OS which is apparently Volisios, unless the artist intended an inverted M by the LI, in which case it would be Vosimos. The reverse reads DVMNO CO EPOS. This has been interpreted "I fly from the war chariots!!" ”

“ The connexion of bull with river is found, indeed, in the Greek mythology throughout its length and breadth; and, in the Assyrian religion, the great predominance of bull-worship seems to show that it personified Assyria itself,—the representative of the Eastern Turan; as its antagonist power, the lion, was the Persian Iran. [21] The last Egyptian analogy which I shall mention, [22] is the genius Hepi, generally cynocephalus-headed, who personified the second of the cardinal points of the Egyptian compass, [23] the north. ”

“ The early fibulæ were of bronze, and the military generally were restricted to the wearing of silver, gold fibulæ being only allowed to the tribunes. Valerian commanded Zosimio the procurator of Syria to present to Claudius II., when military tribune, two fibulæ of silver gilded, and one of gold, as an extra donative [4] , and Aurelian conceded to the common soldiers the permission of wearing gold fibulæ [5] From this period their use may be traced under the Byzantine empire till the Saxon times, although but few Saxon ornaments formed of gold have been found. ”

“ The bull, in the hieroglyphics, was called by the generic word Aha, cattle, [26] —men, or men men, [27] which bears the same signification,—and Ka, the bull, the radical of the Persian Gau, and the English word cow. [28] It is used throughout the hieroglyphical texts in the sense of "male, masculine." Thus, in the square titles, or the Horus standards, as they are called, of the monarchs of the eighteenth and following dynasties, it is followed by the arm holding the stick, the abridged form of the adjective necht, powerful, often found written in its full form. ”

“ Traditions and considerations of a nature unintellegible to modern science, induced or justified the selection. The discovery of the mode of reading the hieroglyphics enables us to take a more certain ground in the inquiry. ”

“ The value of obtaining the reading of filius is perceived by extending it to other coins of the British and Gaulish series. Epillus Comi • f • is evidently Epillus son of Comius, and Tine Comi • f • apparently Timco son of the same monarch of the Atrebates. As Comius was in his government in the time of Julius Cæsar, and as Augustus records in his letter or will at Ancyra, that three kings, Damno, Belinus, and Tim. . . . as the inscription runs, had come on an embassy to him, as mentioned by the Roman authors, it is not improbable that the Tim. . . . of this inscription is for Timcon or Timco. ”

“ At the same time, certain peculiarities of type which distinguish Asiatic forms, arts, and religions from the Greek, consisting in the union of human and animal forms, and in the decoration of animal types, occur in the Phœnician cultus, which seems to have been more allied to the Egyptian and Assyrian idolatries than to the Hellenic. The scanty remains of works of art of this people that have reached us, show considerable local peculiarities. At Cyprus, they appear intermediate between the Greek and the Assyrian, proto-Hellenic. ”

“ The full form of his name Tasciovanus, only occurs in the genitive on the coins of his son, but in many instances the contractions are attributable to the mutilated condition of the coins. It is probable that to the early part of his reign are to be referred those coins which are un- accompanied by any inscription on the reverse; he probably struck subsequently those with Ver on the reverse, which indicated Verulamium, for Verlamio occurs on what must be considered an autonomous coin of that town, issued perhaps during the interregnum which followed the death of Cunobelin. Mr. ”

“ Alban's, while he identified Cam with Camalodunum or Colchester, which has been subsequently confirmed by the reading of two coins. The complete legends of Tasciovani• f• he does not appear to have seen. The legend Tascio or Tascia, for both occur, he supposed to be the name of King Cunobelin's moneyer, which he supported by the fact of the names of moneyers occurring on coins of Augustus. Although this interpretation was not correct, there was in it thus far an approach to truth, that the coins were distinctly assigned to Britain, and that they were supposed to be copied after a Roman model. ”

“ Their remains are so essentially intermingled with those of other nations, and exhibit such traces of foreign influence, as the extant monuments in Malta, Corfu, Corsica, Sicily, and Etruria, the coins of the south coast of Asia Minor, and Carthage, and Sicily show, that it is almost impossible to point out with certainty any predominant characteristic of Phœnician art. Mechanicians rather than artists ”

“ Huxtable's cabinet, is the full form Camuloduno, which confirms the appropriation to Colchester. 3. Those with the reverse reading Solido, but I believe the correct form is, as on a good specimen also in Mr. Huxtable's cabinet, Solidu: it may be the commencement of the name of a town, which the Itineraries have not preserved. I consider it probable that he issued the coins with the name of Colchester on their reverses at the commencement of his reign, from the circumstance of their resembling in style and fabric those of Tasciovanus, who placed the name of St. ”

“ Neville's coin, which entirely confirmed what I had advanced, because on this excellently preserved specimen the last letter was decidedly an L, and consequently Tasc fil. could be no other than Tasciovani filius, the son of Tasciovanus. Mr. Akerman in his work on the "Ancient Coins of Cities and Princes," not only recognised the reading as applicable to Cunobelin and Tasciovanus, but also adopted it as proposed by me for Eppillus, and extended it proprio motu to two other princes. The Rev. Mr. ”

“ Beger. Thes. Brand. III. 136. Tochon D'Annecy. Med. d. Nomes. 4to. Paris. 1822, 139. Lenormant Mus. Ant. Eg. Fo. Paris. 1841, p. 64. Apis appears also with a crescent on his side on the coins of Hadrianotheræ Bithyniæ. ”

“ Ruding, Annals of the Coinage, Pl. V. fig. 23. ↑ Ibid., No. 4. p. 78. Ruding, loc. cit. No. 17. Taylor Combe, Num. Vet. Pop. et Urb. 4to. Lond. 1814. p. 25. No. 25. ↑ l. c. No. 27. ↑ Ann. III. 236. ↑ Ibid. ”