Note 1278 — Chapter V · (continued 2)

Professor Rhys (The Welsh People, 1902, pp. 88-90) remarks that ‘since no hint as to a revolution is vouchsafed [in Caesar’s narrative (B. G., ii, 4, § 7)], the probability is that the empire of Diviciacos in this country subsisted under his successors in Caesar’s time. But,’ he continues, ‘Diviciacos’s people were the Suessiones and the Remi; so we should expect to find both of them represented in Britain, though their names have not been detected. Now we know from a couple of inscriptions that a god of the Remi was Camulos.’ The professor goes on to observe that Camulodunum ‘was near Colchester, in the country of the Trinovantes, in whom we are accordingly prepared to find the Remi we are seeking’; and, he says, ‘The next neighbours of the Trinovantes were the Catuvellauni, in whom we probably have our insular Suessiones. At any rate the name of the Catuvellauni was also that which, shortened into Catelauni ... eventually became ... Chalons, the name of a town ... in a district usually assigned to the Remi ... the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes between them may be regarded as the upholders of the empire of Diviciacos,’ &c. But in Caesar’s time the Catuvellauni were the bitter enemies of the Trinovantes: Camulos was worshipped by many other tribes besides the Remi; and although it is probable that the Gallic Catuvellauni were clients of the Remi in the time of Caesar (Rice Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, 1899, pp. 476-7), it is not unlikely that they were one of the tribes which placed themselves under the protection of the Remi in consequence of the favour shown to the latter by Caesar (B. G., vi, 12, § 7). The passage in which Caesar mentions Diviciacus leaves upon my mind the impression that his empire, like that of Celtillus, the father of Vercingetorix, was short-lived. At all events there is no evidence for asserting its continuance.