Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts - Rodney Castleden - Страница 100
COGIDUMNUS
ОглавлениеTiberius Claudius Cogidumnus was the king of the Regnenses tribe (West Sussex and Hampshire) in the first century AD. He was a tribal chief in the years before the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, then a British client king under Rome.
The Regnenses were a group within the Atrebates tribe, and Cogidumnus may have been king over all of the Atrebates. In one Roman document he is said to have governed several civitates as a client ruler after the conquest and to have been loyal to Rome “down to our own times” (in the 70s). His name is on a damaged inscription found in the Roman city of Chichester, a few miles from Fishbourne, which reads, “To Neptune and Minerva, for the welfare of the Divine House, by the authority of Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus, great King of the Britons, the guild of smiths and those in it gave this temple at their own expense.” This indicates that he was given Roman citizenship by the emperor Claudius.
Cogidumnus’s collaboration with Rome ensured the success of Vespasian’s conquest of central-southern Britain, not least because Vespasian was able to utilize Chichester Harbor, which the Romans called “The Great Harbor,” for their fleet.
Sir Barry Cunliffe, the principal excavator of the Roman palace at Fishbourne, at the head of Chichester Harbor, believes that Fishbourne was the palace of Cogidumnus.