Chapter III: Preface (3)

intimating that it marked the grave of a soldier of the twentieth legion (which was stationed at Chester, the Roman Deva) named Caius Mannius, of the Pollian tribe. Another commemorated a soldier of the fourteenth legion, and has been supposed to belong to a very early period, as that legion was withdrawn from Britain before A.D. 68. It was the legion which suffered so much in the war against Boadicea, and this soldier may perhaps have been engaged in that war, although his having died in Britain does not necessarily imply that the legion to which he had belonged was there at the time, or indeed that it had ever been there, unless we had some other reasons for supposing that it had been there. His name was Marcus Petronius, the son of Lucius, of the Menenian tribe, and the inscription may be read as follows:—