[Sidenote: Flight of Dubnovellaunus and Tincommius(?), the son of Commius, to Rome.]
Cunobeline’s conquest of the Trinovantes appears to have been one of the causes which led to the flight, briefly chronicled by Augustus on the monument of Ancyra,[1459] of two British princes who sought for Roman aid. Their names, as recorded on the stone, were DVMNOBELLAV[_nus_], and, if we are to accept the testimony of Chishull,[1460] an antiquary of a past generation, TIM.... The name of the former, as it is spelled on British coins, was Dubnovellaunos. Those of his coins which appear to have been circulated earliest have been found only in Kent, which he probably at one time ruled.[1461] His later coins tend to show that he afterwards annexed the territory of the Trinovantes, from which he was in his turn expelled by Cunobeline.[1462] But who was the prince who with him undertook the long journey to Rome? The letters TIM, if indeed M was really graven upon the monument, were of course only the first three of another name; and it is possible that Chishull may have mistaken one or perhaps two broken letters for M, or, since M and N were often confused, that the engraver may have been misled by his copy.[1463] Be this as it may, there is only one known name with which TIM ... can be identified,--that of Tincommius, who called himself on some of his coins TINCOM[_mios_] COMMI FILI[_us_] REX[1464]--‘King Tincommius, son of Commius.’ In order to understand the history of Tincommius, we must trace the later career of the Commius who was, beyond all reasonable doubt, his father,[1465]--the king of the Atrebates who had accompanied Caesar to Britain.
[Sidenote: The later adventures of Commius.]
Commius had of course been liberally rewarded for his services: but in the great Gallic insurrection of 52 B.C. he had thrown in his lot with Vercingetorix; and he was one of the four generals to whose joint direction was entrusted the command of the Pan-Gallic host which marched to relieve the latter when he was beleaguered in Alesia. ‘Caesar,’ we read in the seventh _Commentary_, ‘had found Commius a loyal and serviceable agent in former years in Britain; and, in acknowledgement of these services, he had granted his tribe immunity from forced contributions, restored to it its rights and laws, and placed the Morini under his authority. Yet so intense was the unanimous determination of the entire Gallic people to vindicate their liberty and recover their ancient military renown, that no favours, no recollection of former friendship, had any influence with them, but all devoted their energies and resources to the prosecution of the war.’[1466] Patriotism, however, was not the only motive of Commius: he had a reason for the bitterness of his hostility, which Caesar does not mention, but which we learn from Caesar’s friend, Aulus Hirtius, who wrote the last of the _Commentaries on the Gallic War_. In the winter of 53-52 B.C., while Caesar was absent in Cisalpine Gaul, Commius took an active part in forming the nucleus of the coalition of which Vercingetorix was destined to be the leader; and Labienus, who found out his designs, commissioned the tribune Volusenus to assassinate him. Commius escaped with a severe wound; and in the year which followed the overthrow of Vercingetorix he formed, in conjunction with a chief of the Bellovaci, a fresh coalition against Caesar, who was obliged to exert all his strength in order to subdue it. For some time Commius led the life of a brigand chief, and succeeded in capturing several convoys which were on their way to Caesar’s winter camp in the country of the Atrebates. He made himself so formidable that Mark Antony sent Volusenus to make a second attempt to kill him; and although he again escaped, he ultimately surrendered on the express condition that he should never again be brought face to face with any Roman.