ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK C^sar, in describing his second British campaign, mentions five tribes which 'surrendered,' the Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and Cassi, and the context in which he mentions them makes it highly prob- able that their territories lay to the north of the Thames and to the north or west of what is now Essex. Beyond this nothing is recorded of these tribes ; they may, indeed, have been petty peoples whose names looked well on paper, but whose real importance was trifling. Celtic philologists, however, think it possible that an original name Icenimagni (or Ecenimagni) might have been abbreviated by Cassar into Cenimagni and by later genera- tions into Iceni.' Our next traces of the tribe consist in certain British silver coins in- scribed ECE or ECEN (fig. 2), which, along with other gold and silver coins of similar types, though different legends, have p,^ , Co.ns of the Iceni (Ecem). been found at several sites in Norfolk and Suffolk and probably date from the century which elapsed between Cssar and the definite Claudian conquest (b.c. 55-A.D. 43). These coins plainly belonged to the currency of the Celtic tribe then dwelling in and round Norfolk, and the assumption is easy and natural that ECE and ecen stand for Eceni or Iceni.* When the Roman conquest commenced, the Iceni became famous for a little while. At first, as Tacitus relates, they took the Roman side, and perhaps naturally. South-eastern Britain before a.d. 43 was in great part subject to the sons and heirs of the Catuvellaunian chief Cunobeline, but their rule was disputed and disliked, and to many Britons the Roman legions came as deliverers from despotism. The Iceni were neighbours of the Catuvellauni : if not their subjects, they may well have feared subjection. Certainly they joined the Romans and thereby retained some shadow of independence under the rule of their native princes. Four or five years later they repented them. Irritated, as it seems, by some general measure of disarmament enforced by the Romans, they headed a rising. Naturally, they failed ; but they were allowed still to be ruled by their native princes. Twelve years later, they rose again. Their prince Prasutagus, dying, had bequeathed his private wealth to his two daughters and the Emperor Nero. Such was the fashion of the time — to satiate a greedy Emperor with a heavy legacy, lest he should confiscate the whole fortune. Prasutagus hoped thus to save his kingdom for his
- Cassar, De Bella Gallico, 5. 21 ; Rhys, Celtic Britain (ed. 2) p. 287. The attempts to emend the
name by conjecturing Iceni Magni (the Great Iceni) or Iceni Cangi or Iceni Regni, or the like, are all failures. Of the other tribes named, the Segontiaci have been connected with Silchester and the Bibroci with Berkshire. But the former of these identifications is very dubious {Victoria County Hist, of Hamp- shire, i. 273), and the latter, which rests only on the outward similarity of the names, is, according to Mr. W. H. Stevenson, philologically most improbable.
- Evans, Ancient British Coins, chaps, xv., xxviii. The forms Eceni and Iceni seem philologically
interchangeable. 285
