Kent in the Ravenna Cosmography

Kent in the Ravenna Cosmography

This article looks at the evidence in the Ravenna Cosmography, which relates to Kent, and uses the text published by Rivet and Smith.¹ For ease of usage, the references to that work are included in the text.

Ravenna is principally a list of towns, rivers and islands of the Roman Empire, which was compiled after A.D. by an anonymous monk at Ravenna for a fellow cleric (R&S 185). The major source for this work was a Roman map(s) but this apparently was not the Poutinger Table; there may have been at least three sources (R&S 190-200).

To generalize for Britain, the compiler appears to have collected his source material for towns in discrete areas, while listing rivers and islands in two separate groupings around the coastline. Not infrequently, an item from one of these three categories will appear in another category, while corrupt spellings often occur, for example, Manulodulo for Camulodumum (Colchester).

It may also be noted that the name of a settlement is often taken from the river on which it lies, for example, Exa is both the river Exa and the legionary Fortress at Exeter (R&S 378). One discrete group of town names runs from Pevensey around the coast to London and beyond, but before that is discussed, it is necessary to look at the rivers.

Rivers. The end of the British river-sequence runs Intraum, Antrum, Liar, Lenda, Vividin, Durolavi, Alauna, Cogusuveusuron, Durbis, (R. Dour) Lemana, (R. Lympne), Novia, Raxtomessa, and three other names. (R&S 213) The first five names have been placed in the Wash area,² while the Vividin could be a corrupt form of Eidumanis, which has been identified as the Yare.³ It is widely agreed that Durolavi is both corrupt and in the wrong list, and is in fact the settlement of Durolevum which occurs in Iter II of the Antonine Itinerary and on the Peutinger Table (R&S 351). In the former case, Durovelum is listed as being 13 (Roman) miles from Rochester and 12 (Roman) miles from Canterbury; the location of this settlement has been discussed in an earlier issue of the Newsletter.⁴

Leaving aside Alauna for a moment, Rivet and Smith have suggested that Coguveosuron, which has a number of variant and is probably a conflation of two names, be corrected as Coccuveda and equated with the river Coquet in Northumberland, and as Isurim with Aldborough, Yorks. (R&S 311 and 380). There seems no good reason why such an extraordinary anomaly should occur and arguably, <- i>suron might be better considered to be a corruption, the original of which produced the name of the R. Stour which linked Canterbury to the Wantsum Channel, then separating Thanet from the mainland; no worthwhile suggestion is offered on the first part of the name.

There are no direct problems with the identification of Durbis (Dour) and Lemana (Lympne), while the remaining names will be left for discussion below.

The equation of Durolavi with Durolevum and its place in the list immediately before Alauna suggests that the last may be allocated to the nearby Medway which otherwise would be the only major river in Kent not to be listed. The apparent omission of the Thames may be accounted for by the late mention of Raxtomessa. Rivet and Smith have posited that the original source maps all river-names were written on the inland courses. (R&S 213). If the initial 'R' is discarded, Axtomessa may be seen as a slightly corrupt form of Aes Tamesae. (Aestuarium Tamesae (per Tacitus - R&S 98: estuary of the Thames.) which would have been written 'in the sea' and thus perhaps added as an afterthought, as were two of the final items, which appear to be islands: Senna (?Sina R&S 181) and Cunia (C1111is R&S 214); Rivet and Smith note that the British name for the Thames was Tamessa (R&S 466).

Towns. The town-sequence in Ravenna runs from Anderelio (Anderitum: Pevensey) anti-clockwise around the Kent coast to Landini, Tamese, Brinavis, Alauna, (map). The first of these name is generally accepted a a corrupt rorm or Londinium (R&S 397), but views vary on Tamese. Some commentators regard it as a river-name (R&S 207), but others believe ii to be a place-name on the Thames perhaps because Tamese seems to be in the locative case⁵; Raxtomessa appears to have accounted for that river already (see above). Tamese may be the name of the hypothetical settlement at the Westminster crossing which is widely accepted as the first place where the Romans reached the Thames in the Claudian invasion.⁶ Leaving aside the identification of Brinavis for a moment, if Alauna is a place name on the river of the same name in Kent (or even if it is a repeat of the river-name), then the compiler appears to have returned in a helical fashion in his list of towns to one on the Medway. This town was presumably written in isolation from the string of place-names along or close to the coast; such a site would need to be well inland in the circumstances and the criteria might fit Tonbridge.

To return to Brinavis - although Rivet and Smith argue that it is corrupt, being a duplication of Durobrivae (Rochester) (R&S 346), Professor Frere in his review of their book disagrees with this proposition, calling the argument over-ingenious'⁷ The first element of Brinavis possibly translates as 'dark' and the second as 'stream', which together has been interpreted as relating to a settlement of the same name on one of the tributaries of the Thames.⁸ The order of the last four place- . names indicates that Brinavis should lie "beyond" Londinium but the helical nature of the listing (if Alauna is indeed somewhere in the Kentish Weald) would appear to place the settlement on a tributary feeding the Thames from the south. Such a tributary could be the Wandle (WR on map) whose Roman name appears to be Banna (or even the Ban(n)avis);⁹ the possibility that the settlement on the Wandle (Wandsworth - WT on map) might be the vicus near which St. Patrick's father had a villa has been explored elsewhere.¹⁰

No parallel exists in Britain for the first element of Brinavis. but the element 'bauna' does occur five times (R&S 261-6). Brin as a first element does not feature in the list of some 6,000 placenames in the Roman Empire compiled by Miller.¹¹ It is therefore postulated that Brinavis is a corrupt form of Bannavis - the two vertical strokes of the first 'a' may have separated into an 'r' and an 'i' through a copying error; as perhaps happened in the case of Olenacum / Olerica (R&S 430). The double nn presents no problem because it often becomes a single letter. (R&S 366).

Some further thoughts: Further support on Alauna is offered by an early sequence of place-names in Ravenna, which runs thus: Alauna silva (forest), Omire, Tedertis, Lindinia, Canza (R&S 206). Although Rivet and Smith place the last two names in the south-west of Britain, Dillmark takes them to be Londinium and Cantia ('Kent'), largely because the Parthey-Pinder edition of Ravenna lists the name as Londinis.¹² If he is correct - and this writer is of the opinion as well¹³ - then the Alauna 'forest' could be equated with the Weald and the name would naturally apply to its main river, the Medway, and the main town on it (?Tonbridge).

In the list of river-names Novia and Lemana (R. Lympne) are adjacent, while in the towns' list Nuba (? Noba R&S 207) and Lemanis (Lympne) are next but one to each other. Now, Ptolemy describes a place on the south coast of Britain as [[Kmvoi; J\tµ�v]] Kainos Limen 'new harbour' which Rivet and Smith suggest should be Dover (R&S 116). Because Ptolemy places it due south of Canterbury, Lympne would be a better location, especially as Romney marsh had a substantial marine inlet at least as early as the 2nd. Century A.D.¹⁴ The question must arise as to whether Lemanis, whose name origin is unclear (R&S 385), is a latinised Limen and whether the Roman name for the port, rather than the late fort, was more correctly Nova Lemanis, thus echoing the Greek name. In this connection it may be noted that the Anglo-Saxon name for Lympne was Liminas (R&S 386), the name Limen is applied to the R. Rother in a charter of A.D. 741 as well as other watercourses at later dates¹⁵ and in classical Latin limen is an entrance or threshold, in limine portus (at the entrance of the harbour.)¹⁶

References

1. A.L.F. Rivet and C. Smith. The Place Names of Roman Britain (1979).

2. N. F11e11/es. 'Fresh thoughts on the Saxon Shore' in V.A. Maxfield and M.I. Dobson. (ed) Roman Frontier Studies 1989 - Proceedings of the XVth. International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies. (1991) 63.

3. Ibid.

4. N. Fuentes, 'The Location of Durolevum' Kent Archaeological Society Newsletter No. 17 ( I 990) 2.

5. I. A. Richmond and O. G. S. Crawford, 'The British Section of the Ravenna Cosmography' Archaeologia XCIII (1949) 7; R. Canham 'Ravenna Cosmography' London Archaeologist 1 91971) 179.

6. N. Fuentes. 'Of Castles and Elephants' London Archaeologist. 5. (1985) 90.

7. S. S. Frere, 'Naming of Roman Britain' Britannia XI (1980) 423.

8. Canham, op sit. fn. 5.

9. N. Fuentes, 'Roman Wandsworth: Part 2, Wandsworth Town' Wandsworth History, No. 62 (1991) 18-24.

10. N. Fuentes, 'St. Patrick, Battersea and Wandsworth' Wandsworth History. No. 63 (1992) 18-19.

11. K. Miller. Itineraria Romana (1916) 961-981.

12. M. Dillmann, Observations on Chapter V.31. 'Britannia in the Ravenna Cosmography' Archaeologia CVI (1979) 66.

13. The writer is presently writing up a more general article on Ravenna which is to be published elsewhere.

14. C. Green, 'Palaeography of marine inlets in the Romney Marsh area' in J. Eddison and C. Green (ed) Romney Marsh - Evolution. Occupation, Reclamation (1988) 168.

15. lbid.

16. Vergil, Aeneid VII 598.