or Boduni, an ancient people of Britain, who possessed the territory which now forms the counties of Oxford and Gloucester. Both names seem to have been derived from the low situation of a great part of the country which they inhabited; for both Durn and Bodun signify deep or low in the ancient language of Gaul and Britain. The Dobuni are not mentioned among the British nations who resisted the Romans under Julius Caesar; and before the invasion of Claudius they had been so much oppressed by the Cattivellani, that they cheerfully submitted to the Roman yoke. Cogidubnus their prince was confirmed by Claudius in the government, and fewer garrisons were stationed in his dominions than in those of the other native princes. Consequently there are comparatively few Roman remains in that part of the country. The Durocorovium of Antoninus, and the Corinium of Ptolemy, are believed to have been the capital of the Dobuni at Cirencester, where there are still many marks of a Roman station. Cleveum or Gleveum, in the thirteenth iter of Antoninus, stood where the city of Gloucester now stands; and Abone, in the fourteenth iter, was probably situated at Avinton on the Severn.

DOCETÆ (from δοκεῖν, to appear), a name applied to those heretics in the early Christian church who held that Christ, during his life, had not a real or natural, but only an apparent or phantom body. From this circumstance they were also called Phantasiasta, Phantasiadocteae, Opinarii, and Opinatii. The origin of this opinion is to be sought in the Greek, Alexandrine, and Oriental philosophizing about the imperfection or rather the essential impurity of matter. Traces of a Jewish Docetism are to be found in Philo; and in the Christian form it is combated in the writings of John, and more formally in the epistles of Ignatius. It differed much in its complexion according to the points of view adopted by the different authors. Among the Gnostics and Manichaeans it existed in its worst type, and in a milder form it is to be found even in the writings of the orthodox teachers. The bolder docete assumed the position that Christ was born without any participation of matter; that his eating and drinking, and even his crucifixion, was a mere phantasm. They denied, accordingly, the resurrection and the ascent into heaven. Some held that another man was crucified instead of Christ. To this class belonged Dositheus, Saturninus, Cerdo, Marcion, and their followers, the Ophites, Manichaeans, and others. The other, or milder school of Docetæ, attributed to Christ an ethereal and heavenly instead of a truly human body. Amongst these were Valentinus, Bardesanes, Basilides Tatianus, and their followers. They varied considerably in their estimation of the share which this body had in the real actions and sufferings of Christ. Clement and Origen, at the head of the Alexandrian school, took a somewhat subtle view of the incarnation, and Docetism pervades their controversies with the Monophysites. Docetic tendencies have also been developed in later periods of the church's history, as for example by the Priscillianists and the Bogomiles, and also since the Reformation by Jacob Böhmen, Menno Simonis, and a small fraction of the Anabaptists.—(Niemeyer De Docetis, Halle, 1823-4.)