nd 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.]

[Footnote 4: Ravennas (ed. Parthey and Pinder), pp. 425 foll. I have
given a list of the towns in my Appendix to Mommsen's _Provinces of the
Empire_ (English trans., 1909), ii. 352.]

Of the smaller local organizations, little can be said. Towns existed,
but many of them were the tribal capitals mentioned in the last
paragraph, and these, as I have said, were doubtless ruled by the
magistrates of the tribes. It is idle to guess who administered the
towns that were not such capitals or who controlled the variou