Belenus was the divinity principally
worshipped in it; but, according to popular superstition, adoration was
also paid to a golden calf, which was buried in the hill, and still
remains entombed there. Even within the last fifty years, two laborers
have lost their lives in a fruitless attempt to find this hidden
treasure. Tombs, and urns, and human bones, are constantly discovered;
yet neither Druidic temples, nor pillars of stone, nor cromlechs or
Celtic remains of any description exist, at least, at present, in the
neighborhood of Bayeux.
Roman relics, however, abound. The vases and statues dug up near this
city, have afforded employment to the pen and the pencil of Count
Caylus, who, judging from the style of art, refers the greater part of
them to the times of Julius and Augustus Caesar. Medals of the earliest
emperors have likewise frequently been detected among the foundations of
the houses of the city; and even so recently as in the beginning of the
present century, mutilated cippi, covered with Latin inscriptions, have
been brought to light. These discoveries all tend to shew the Roman
origin of Bayeux, and two Roman causeways also join here; so that,
notwithstanding the arguments of the Abbe le Beuf, most antiquaries
still believe that Bayeux was the city called by Ptolemy the _Naeomagus
Viducassium_.
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