RIB 91: Chichester Dedication Naming King Togidubnus

Stone remembers what prose can shade. At Chichester—Noviomagus Reginorum—a dedicatory slab now catalogued as RIB 91 preserves a civic moment and a political mechanism. The inscription, raised by the collegium fabrorum, authorizes a temple “by the authority of Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus (or Cogidubnus), great king of the Britons.” The words are as clear as the chisel marks: a king under Roman auspices directing public works [7].

Tacitus gives the policy behind the stone its edge: “Some states were given to King Cogidumnus… the ancient practice of the Roman people, to have even kings among the instruments of servitude” (Agricola 14) [1][2]. The Latin phrase instrumenta servitutis—tools of subjugation—tells us exactly how Rome valued such arrangements. They conserved manpower, translated orders into local terms, and wrapped authority in a familiar face.

The setting matters. Chichester stood near the coastal approaches west of the Thames, a node where trade, diplomacy, and military logistics overlapped. A sanctioned temple here signaled both piety and policy, a place where scarlet-cloaked officials could meet local elites under a roof raised with royal and Roman consent. The tap of iron on stone carried as much administrative weight as a trumpet blast on parade.

Epigraphy gives this politics a human name—Togidubnus/Cogidubnus—bridging text and people. The “great king” epithet reads grand, but the mechanics were pragmatic. He smoothed tax collection, mustered levies for road gangs, and delivered intelligence along the coastal fringe. In return, he kept status, land, and freedom to distribute favors.

The partnership was real and contingent. As long as client loyalties held and Roman victories seemed irreversible, the inscription’s words stood as collaboration rather than capitulation. When revolt tested the system, the survival of such client structures would measure how deep Rome’s control ran in the south [7][1][2].