The Romans, under Claudius, landed on the eastern coast; and established his power in this part of the country. He built strongholds at Gorleston and camps at Caister, near the present site of Yarmouth, and on the opposite shore at Burgh Castle, where extensive ruins yet remain. Advancing up the arm of the sea, the Romans built a camp at Reedham; and sailing yet higher up they built camps on the southern side of Norwich, at Caistor and Tasburgh. Historians for a long time believed that Caistor was the _Venta Icenorum_ of the Romans, and preserved a very ancient tradition, that Norwich was built of Caistor stone out of the ruins of the Roman camp. THE VENTA ICENORUM. The late Hudson Gurney, Esq., collected ample materials for a full history of Norwich, but the only result of his researches seems to have been a letter to the late Dawson Turner, Esq., on the question of the _Venta Icenorum_ mentioned by the Roman writers, whether it was Elmham, as Blomefield supposed, or Caistor, as later historians believed, or Norwich, as most antiquarians now think. The question is of some importance as regards the antiquity of the city; for supposing it to have been the _Venta Icenorum_ of the Romans, with all the Roman roads radiating from it, the _Venta_ must have been a large place. Main roads were of course made for traffic and for means of communication, which imply the existence of many people living in settled habitations. Main roads prove a certain advance in civilization; but the question is, whether the Romans really made all the roads attributed to them, in Norfolk and Suffolk, during the four hundred years of their occupation. Main roads might have radiated from Caistor originally, and afterwards might have been diverted to Norwich. Mr. Hudson Gurney adduced some proofs that Norwich and not Caistor was the Venta Icenorum. He says— “The first question to examine, on the view of Norwich, Norwich Castle, and the Roman Camp at Caistor, may be, whether Norwich or Caistor be the ‘Venta Icenorum’ of the Romans; Norwich standing on the Wensum, and Caistor on the Taes, on the opposite side of what was the great estuary.” “To begin, then, with Camden. In his accounts of Norwich and of Caistor he falls into the most extraordinary errors, confounding the courses of the three rivers, the Wensum, the Taes, and the Yare. He places Norwich upon the Yare instead of the Wensum, and gives the Wensum the course of the Taes as ‘flowing from the south;’ and still more strangely, as a king-at-arms, he attributes the erection of the present Castle of Norwich to Hugh Bygod, ‘from the lions salient carved in stone on it, which were the old arms of the Bygods on their seals, though one of them bore a cross for his seal.’” Mr. Hudson Gurney remarks on this error—