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Of what indeed she was before the Romans came and drew us within their great administration, we are largely ignorant; but we know that they established here a town of considerable importance, which they called Venta Belgarum, larger than Silchester, if we may believe that the mediaeval walls stand upon Roman foundations, and certainly a centre of Roman administrative life.
Supply consisteret to correspond with insurgeret. Zeugma. Cf. note, 18: in aequum. Media campi. The intervening parts of the plain, sc. between the two armies. Covinarius is found only in T. Covinarii==the essedarii of Caesar. Covinus erat currus Belgarum, a quibus cum Britanni acceperant. Dr. Pedes. Nom. sing, in app. with subject of constitit. XXXVI. Indentibus gladiis, etc.
The very street by which he leaves the city, as it were, by the now destroyed North Gate, is Roman, one of the four roads which met in the Forum of Venta Belgarum and divided Roman Winchester into four quarters, though, perhaps because of the marshes of the Itchen, not into four equal parts as in Chichester.
Equally interesting have been the fortunes of the three towns of which Winchester is the type. In the old Welsh tongue, Gwent means a champaign country, or level alluvial plain. The Romans borrowed the word as Venta, and applied it to the three local centres of Venta Icenorum in Norfolk, Venta Belgarum in Hampshire, and Venta Silurum in Monmouth.
The Roman masters of Lucius called his capital, rebuilt under their tuition, "Venta Belgarum." The British name Caer Gwent belonged to the original settlement. The size and boundaries of both are uncertain.
The Belgae had been crossing the narrow sea and settling here, presumably driving away the inhabitants whom they found. They so specially occupied the parts where now Hampshire is, that the capital city, Went, was named from them by the Latins Venta Belgarum, Belgian Venta; to return in later times to its old name of Caer Went, this is, Went Castle, Winchester.
Didn't the Romans get their Venta Belgarum, which finally developed into Winta-ceaster and Winchester, from the far older Celtic name for an important citadel? Wasn't there a Christian church before the days of Arthur, my alleged ancestor? Wasn't the cathedral begun by the father of Ælfred on the foundations of that poor church as well as those of a Roman temple?
In 1727 was printed at Hall in Saxony, under the false name of Delft, a book entitled Hugonis Grotii Belgarum Phoenicis manes ab iniquis obtrectationibus vindicati.
About sixteen miles south-west of Selborne is the chief city of Hampshire and one of the great historical cities of the realm Winchester built on the side of a chalk-hill rising from the valley of the Itchen, a stream that was Izaak Walton's favorite fishing-ground. This was the Roman Venta Belgarum, and was made an episcopal see in the seventh century.
Historians claim a high antiquity for Winchester as the Caer Gwent of the Celtic and Belgic Britons, the Venta Belgarum of the Romans, and the Wintanceaster of the Saxons. The history of Winchester is nearly coeval with the Christian era.
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