The history of the town dates from the far-off times of the Roman occupation, at a period far anterior to the date of the Christian era. Of this occupation and of the possession of the surrounding country by the Roman legions of Julius Cæsar and his successors there have been many evidences discovered in recent and former times within the confines of the town. The pulling down of ancient buildings, the making of sewers, and excavations for dock extensions have often resulted in the discovery of beautiful ornaments and burnt clay vessels dating from Roman times. And there also exist traces of the Roman road which led from Southampton northward to Winchester, and of the Roman fortified camp of Clausentum hard by at Bitterne on the River Itchen. The first authentic record of the Saxon occupation of the town, then known as “Hanton,” “Hantune,” or “Old Hampton,” occurs in the ninth century, when the place would appear, from existing chronicles and records, to have been one of considerable importance. Several authorities, indeed, ascribe the protecting walls, and the castle and keep, situated in the north-western corner of the town, to the Saxons. Of these things, unhappily, but few traces now remain. The town, with its sheltered harbour and its rising prosperity, did not escape the attention of the Danes, who, at various times during the ninth and tenth centuries, proved such scourges to the various places on the south coast. The town, in fact, might almost have been considered at those periods as a landing-place or base from which the Danes ravaged the surrounding country and directed their attacks upon Winchester and other inland towns. During the reigns of Ethelwolf, about 838, and Ethelbert, about 860, so well carried out were the raids of these Danish pirates, and so large was the force taking part in them, that even inland Winchester itself was reached along the ancient Roman road and plundered. To antiquarians the fact that in the reign of Athelstan, 928, two mints were set up at Southampton will be evidence of its size and importance, and doubtless the existence of these money-making institutions had not a little to do with the fact that a few years later the Danes again made one of their descents upon the town and plundered it without mercy. Edmund Ironside, in consequence of the hold these invaders succeeded in getting upon the country, had on the decease of Ethelred to consent to a division of it with the Danish King.