It is difficult to see why under Dr. Guest's theory of Roman foundation, which is accepted in Green's _Making of England_, London should have had a Celtic name at all. Dr. Rhys says that the name was so ancient that the Roman attempt to change it to Augusta failed. That it was a local habitation before the Roman occupation seems to be almost proved by the prehistoric and early objects found on the site, amongst which are four or five inscribed coins of Cunobelin (Cymbeline) found in the city and neighbourhood; and it seems unlikely that a mere camp in 43 would have grown in 61 to the important place celebrated by Tacitus. Green says that the chief argument against its antiquity is the fact that the great Watling Street[11] passed wide of the city through Westminster, but surely there might be settlements below the lowest convenient passage of the river. The Watling Street, if earlier than the settlement, _did not in any case_ cause the town to be built on its course, and, if later, it _did not_ pass through the settlement. The argument, indeed, goes only to prove that either the Watling Street or London could not be where they are. Or, at most, it might be contended that the road was more likely to go to the town than the town was to settle on the road, and as they are not together, that the road may be earlier than the town; but of actual time the argument can show nothing. Altogether, nothing can be got out of this argument, and we are free to conclude that London is at least as old as our era. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--BRONZE LAMP, ROMAN, FOUND IN LONDON.] * * * * * _The Legend of London._--Geoffrey of Monmouth's history of the Britons, written about 1130, contains a legend of the founding of London, which tells how Brutus, migrating from Troy to this western island, formed the design of building a city. On coming to the Thames he found on its bank a site most suitable for his purpose, and building the city there, he called it New Troy--_Troiam Novam_, "a name afterwards corrupted into Trinovantum." Here King Belinus afterwards built a prodigious tower and a haven for ships under it, which the citizens call after his name--Billingsgate--to this day. Still later King Lud surrounded the city with strong walls and towers, and called it Caer Lud; when he died his body was buried by the gate which is called in the British tongue Porthlud, and in the Saxon Ludesgata. All this was received as firm history, until, with the critical reaction against "mere legend," it was all cast aside as fiction and forgery. From this extreme position there is again a reaction, and Geoffrey is allowed to have founded on earlier writings, now in part lost, and to have embodied genuine folk-stories and lays of British origin.[12]