Group 1: the Cornish Peninsula

V ¶31 in qua britania plurimas fuisse ciuitates et castra legimus ex quibus aliquantas designare uolumus id est:

This group appears to take us on a general perambulation of the Cornish Peninsula and adjacent area. *Fl Taua, the second name, is clearly the River Taw (Ekwall 1928, 394; Thomas 1966a, 87; Rivet & Smith 1979, 470). *Nemetostatio is probably the fort at North Tawton, which is in an area where a group of modern names containing the elements Nymet and Nemet are found (Rivet & Smith 1979, 425). The identification of *Fl Conio with Ptolemy’s Κενιωνος ποταμου εκβολαι (Geography II.3,3) made by Rivet & Smith (1979, 306) must therefore be questioned as the general progression seems to be from north-east to south-west. It may refer the River Torridge, although this is a Celtic name, derived by Ekwall (1928, 414) from a British *Torric-, ‘violent, rough’. *Glano should therefore be somewhere in north Devon. perhaps in the vicinity of Barnstaple. Tamaris, the Ταμαρη of Ptolemy (II.3,3), is a site on the River Tamar (Ekwall 1928, 389), perhaps at the crossing at Launceston, not the river itself, as the name recurs in the list of river-names (107₄₈). *Durocornouio and <Pilais> cannot now be identified. Charles Thomas (1966a, 87) originally identified the former with The Rumps, a pre-Roman defended enclosure. More recently, he suggested that it might be Tintagel, the site of an important sub-Roman trading settlement, although its Romano-British status is not clear (Harry & Morris 1997, 121). <Vernilis> may be the same as Ptolemy’s Ουολιβα (Geography II.3,13), perhaps near Liskeard (Strang 1997, 30); the correct Romano-British form may have been *Verleua. The Cosmographer’s form would have arisen by way of a transposition of -l- and -u-, the latter being miscopied as -n-.

The next name must be for *Fl Deruentione, the River Dart, so the Cosmographer’s eye may have moved from travelling along the spine of Cornwall, following the poorly known road along the centre of the peninsula, and he has possibly now turned his attention to the road south from Exeter, closer to the south Devon coast. Deuionisso Statio and *Deruentio Statio (which are wrongly divided in the text) are probably unlocated Roman government establishments, perhaps tax offices. The latter may have lain in the Dart valley (Dart being a British *Deruentiu: Ekwall 1928, 114), perhaps at Buckfastleigh or Totnes, and the former perhaps near Newton Abbot or elsewhere on the River Teign. The next name, Duriarno, is probably not the same as Durnouaria (Dorchester), as suggested by Rivet & Smith (1979, 345) following Horsley (1732, 490), since it is probably not corrupt (compare the Arnodurum quoted by Williams (Richmond & Crawford 1949, 32), which shows the more usual ‘continental’ ordering of elements). Instead, it may be the name of a site in the vicinity of Plymouth where the inhumation cemetery at Mount Batten and a sequence of coins attest a settlement of some importance (Thomas 1966a, 86). Uxelis is too far west to be the same as Ptolemy’s Ουξελλα (II.3, 120, which must be on the River Parrett, his Ουεξαλλα εισχυσις (II.3,2), and may be a site or river in Cornwall, perhaps the Fowey or the Fal, unless it is an example of a name written to the west of its symbol on the map source. If this is the case, then it may have been near Barnstaple (Strang 1997, 30).