History of Reading, Berkshire earlier folk, or tribal, name. Anglo-Saxon names ending in "-ingas" originally referred not to a place but to a people, in this case specifically the descendants or followers of a man named "Reada", literally "The Red One." In late 870 an army of Danes invaded the then kingdom of Wessex and set up camp at Reading. On 4 January 871, the first Battle of Reading took place, when an army led by King Ethelred and his brother Alfred the Great attempted unsuccessfully to breach the Danes' defences. The battle is described in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", and this account provides the
Battle of the Abas that utilised here by Pompey to conceal a force of infantry behind a screen of cavalry would later be used against him by Julius Caesar at the Battle of Pharsalus, at which Pompey would be defeated. Battle of the Abas The Battle of the Abas was fought in 65 BC between the forces of the Roman Republic under Pompey Magnus and those of the Albanian King Oroeses during the course of the Third Mithridatic War. The battle took place on a flat plain by the River Abas (likely the modern Alazani), after the Roman forces had only recently crossed over