First Stop: Coggydubs' Palace at Fishbourne

A map of Roman Britain.  Noviomagus, or modern 

Chichester, is on the southern coast,  southwest of 

Londinium. Fishbourne was just west of Noviomagus.

So after an interminable Odyssey to get the car and some musings on why people drive where, Mirko and I arrived at our first stop, Fishbourne Roman Palace, near modern Chichester in the southern most part of England.  To the Romans, Chichester was called "Noviomagus" and it was the site of both some of the earliest Roman buildings in England during the invasion under Claudius in 43 AD and, later, possibly home to one of the supporting characters of the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC), Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus (Coggydubs to me and my students).  As such, the palace served as the setting for Stages 15, 16 and 21 in the CLC books.

Hypocausts or heating system of one of the rooms of the
Roman palace at Fishbourne.

Due to the misadventures of getting the car, we only had about 30 minutes to explore the whole site.  It really wasn't nearly enough time, but we did get a good overview of the site and we could begin to understand its incredible size and complexity.  We also got to see some fantastic hypocausts (or Roman heating systems), some mosaics and we had just enough time to grab a book and some trinkets in the bookshop.

"Dolphin mosaic" from the Palace.
Features Cupid riding a dolphin

However, the most interesting aspect of the visit for me was that I suddenly found myself asking some of the very same questions that my students often ask me about the people, places and things which appear in the Cambridge Latin books.  How much of the stories are real?  How do we know?  What qualifies as evidence or proof?

Well, now that I'm settled in Rome, I finally have had some time to start reading the book I had hurriedly purchased in Fishbourne.  It turns out that this palace only may have belonged to Cogidubnus.  In fact, there is no hard evidence to say that it did, only some pieces of circumstantial evidence which one of the leading experts on the site has strung together to form a hypothesis.  More shocking than this is that many argue that the king's name might not have even been Cogidubnus, but rather Togidubnus! Finally, another archeologist has recently attacked the theory that Cogidubnus was the owner and has instead suggested that, due to architectural and aesthetic similarities with the Emperor Domitian's Domus Augustana in Rome, it was more likely built as late as the 90s AD, undoubtedly after the death of Cogidubnus.

So does that make everything that Cambridge Latin has told us about Coggydubs and his sweet palace a lie???  Well, not exactly.  First of all, as I have talked about with my students many times, the stories in the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC) are just that, stories contrived to help us learn to read Latin but based in the real culture in order to help us gain more cultural awareness as we transition toward classical texts towards the end of the series.  So as always, the books have taken some real people and real places and have woven them into a plausible, if not fully authentic, tale.  So keeping that in mind, let's take a look at what we do actually know about these people and places before we move on...

First of all, as I mentioned there is an ongoing debate about who really built and owned the palace.  In fact, the wikipedia article on the Fishbourne Roman Palace is actually very good, full of cited sources and presenting well both sides of the argument, so it's definitely worth checking out.  But don't stop there!  The website Roman Britain has an interesting entry on the palace and something called Wikimapia will help you explore the area from satellite views.

Original stone inscription found in Chichester in 1723.

Now about his name.  Was it Cogidubnus?  Or Cogidumnus?  Or Togidumnus?  Or Togidubnus?  We simply don't know!  The best evidence for his name is the inscription that was found in nearby Chichester (Noviomagus) in 1723, seen in the picture here and reproduced in the drawing below.  It came from a temple the king had built to Neptune and Minerva and so is evidence that he certainly seemed to want to fit in with the newly arrived Romans.

Recreation of the inscription with postulated missing letters.

In it, as you can see, the left side of the inscription is missing, as well as a few other pieces in the middle and on the right.  While most of those other letters are easy enough to guess at, the very letter we need--the first letter of the king's name--is missing!!  Argh!!  So why do some people say Cogidubnus and others Togidubnus?  Well, our only other historical source for this guy, believe it or not, is a passing reference in the Roman historian Tacitus' book about his father-in-law, your friend and mine, Gnaeus Iulius Agricola.  In it, Tacitus refers to a king who had been very loyal to the Romans in general and Vespasian and the Flavian emperors named "Cogidumnus" in all but one of the manuscripts where he is called "Togidumnus."

Folio from the 9th Century manuscript
of Tacitus' Agricola.

So which is it?  Well, without dragging this out too much further, remember that basically all the ancient Roman books that we have come down to us through medieval manuscripts which were copied and recopied by hand throughout the centuries.  Therefore, it is not uncommon for slight variations in spelling and even grammar to occur in one or more manuscripts.  However, just because most of the manuscripts have his name start with C and only one has it start with T, doesn't necessarily mean that Cogidumnus must be the correct spelling.  It's possible that all the "C" manuscripts derive from one common ancestor where the mistake was first made.  Without knowing the history of the transmission of manuscripts of Tacitus, we cannot really even make a guess at this.  That sounds like a great summer project for someone, but sadly I have so much else to read and write!!

So how about you?  What do you think?  Cogidubnus or Togidumnus?  And did he live at Fishbourne?  Or did the palace belong to someone else?  Do some research of your own and feel free to comment below!!

Note:  I have just learned how to include hyperlinks, so there are plenty of clickable words above that will take you to some cool sites for more information on some of these topics!