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THE PAULINUS INSCRIPTION

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he Paulinus inscription is carved on a statue-base now situated in the church porch at Caerwent. The inscription was originally of twelve lines, but the first line of Latin text has been lost It reads:

[To Tiberius Claudius] Paulinus, (once) commander of the Second Augustan Legion, (next) proconsul of the province of Gallia Narbonensis, (now) imperial governor of the province of Lugdunensis; by decree of the council of the community of the state of the Silures.

The existence of a Civitas Silurum is recorded on a fine statue-base found at Caerwent in 1903. It had been reused as part of a post-Roman construction of heavy blocks in the centre of the village; the war memorial now stands on it. The stone can be seen today in the porch of St Stephen's church. The inscription is dedicated to Tiberius Claudius Paulinus, who had been commandant of the Second Augustan Legion at Caerleon, a post he held during the reign of Caracalla (211-17). After leaving Caerleon, Paulinus held office in two Gallic provinces, Gallia Narbonensis and Gallia Lugdunensis. Paulinus evidently performed some helpful act or made some gift to the Silures, and in return they honoured him with the erection of a statue and a record of his career.

In 220, he returned as governor of Britannia lnferior, the more northerly of the two provinces into which the island had been divided by the Emperor Septimius Severus (AD. 198-211) at the beginning of the third century. The Caerwent stone does not record Paulinus' governorship of Britannia lnferior and it may be presumed, therefore, that it was set up a short time before he took up the post.


The Caerwent inscription is one of the most important to have been found in Roman Britain; besides giving details of the typical mixed military and civil career of a Roman governor, it also throws light on the local civil administration. It tells us that the tribe was administered by a council or ordo which could pass decrees. Since the erection of the inscription was an act of the tribal council on behalf of the whole of the Silures, rather than just the town of Venta, it clearly demonstrates that a civitas should be seen, as it were, as an area of territory with a town in the middle, rather than as a town with territory round it as a Roman colonia would have been.