que cum fuerit, non videatur anus."[401]

[To RUFUS. Claudia, from far-off climes, my Pudens weds: With
choicest bliss, O Hymen, crown their heads! May she still love
her spouse when gray and old, He in her age unfaded charms
behold.]

It may have been in consequence of this marriage that Pudens joined
with Claudius Cogidubnus in setting up the Imperial Temple at
Chichester.[402] And the fact that Claudia was an adopted member of
the Rufine family shows that she was connected with the Gens Pomponia
to which this family belonged.

E. 11.--Now Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, had married
a Pomponia, who in A.D. 57 was accused of practising an illicit
religion, and, though pronounced guiltless by her husband (to whose
domestic tribunal she was left, as Roman Law permitted), passed
the rest of her life in retirement.[403] When we read of an illicit
religion in connection with Britain, our first thought is, naturally,
that Druidism is intended.[404] But there are strong reasons for
supposing that Pomponia was actually a Christian. The names of her
family are found in one of the earliest Christian catacombs in Rome,
that of Calixtus; and that Christianity had its converts in very
high quarters we know from the case of Clemens and Domitilla, closely
related to the Imperial throne.

E. 12.--Turning next to St. Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, we find,
in close connection, the names of Pudens and Claudia (along with
that of the future Pope Linus) amongst the salutations from Roman
Christians. And recent excavations have established the fact that the
house of Pudens was used for Christian worship at this date, and is
now represented by the church known as St. Pudentiana.[405] That this
should have been so proves that this Pudens was no slave going under
his master's name (as was sometimes done), but a man of good position
in Rome. Short of actual proof it would be hard to imagine a series
of evidences more morally convincing that the Pudens and Claudia of
Martial are the Pudens and Claudia of St. Paul, and that they, as well
as Pomponia, were Christians. Whether, then, St. Paul did or did
not actually visit Britain, the earliest British Christianity is, at
least, closely connected with his name.

E. 13.--Neither legendary nor historical sources tell us of any
further development of British Christianity till the latter days of
the 2nd century. Then, however, it had become sufficiently widespread
to