Chapter 9

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION, A.D. 85-211

SECTION A.

Pacification of Britain--Roman roads--London their centre--Authority for names--Watling Street--Ermine Street--Icknield Way.

A. 1.--The work of Agricola inaugurated in Britain that wonderful _Pax Romana_ which is so unique a phenomenon in the history of the world. That Peace was not indeed in our island so long continued or so unbroken as in the Mediterranean lands, where, for centuries on end, no weapon was used in anger. But even here swords were beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks to an extent never known before or since in our annals. So profound was the quiet that for a whole generation Britain vanishes from history altogether. All through the Golden Age of Rome, the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, no writer even names her; and not till A.D. 120 do we find so much as a passing mention of our country. But we may be sure that under such rulers the good work of Agricola was developing itself upon the lines he had laid down, and that Roman civilization was getting an ever firmer hold. The population was recovering from the frightful drain of the Conquest, the waste cities were rebuilt, and new towns sprang up all over the land, for the most part probably on old British sites, connected by a network of roads, no longer the mere trackways of the Britons, but "streets" elaborately constructed and metalled.

A. 2.--All are familiar with the Roman roads of Britain as they figure on our maps. Like our present lines of railway, the main routes radiate in all directions from London, and for a like reason; London having been, in Roman days as now, the great commercial centre of the country. The reason for this, that it was the lowest place where the Thames could be bridged, we have already referred to.[189] We see the _Watling Street_ roughly corresponding to the North-Western Railway on one side of the metropolis, and to the South-Eastern on the other; the _Ermine Street_ corresponding to the Great Northern Railway; while the Great Western, the South-Western, the Great Eastern, and the Portsmouth branch of the South Coast system are all represented in like manner. We notice, perhaps, that, except the Watling Street and the Ermine Street, all these routes are nameless; though we find four minor roads with names crossing England from north-east to south-west, and one from north-west to south-east. The former are the _Fosse Way_ (from Grimsby on the Humber to Seaton on the Axe), the _Ryknield Street_ (from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Caerleon-upon-Usk), the _Akeman Street_ (from Wells on the Wash to Aust on the Severn), and the _Icknield Way_ (from Norfolk to Dorset). The latter is the _Via Devana_ (from Chester to Colchester).

A. 3.--It comes as a surprise to most when we learn that all these names (except the Watling Street, the Fosse, and the Icknield Way only) are merely affixed to their respective roads by the conjectures of 17th-century antiquarianism, Gale being their special identifier. The names themselves (except in the case of the Via Devana) are old, and three of them, the Ermine Street, the Icknield Street, and the Fosse Way, figure in the inquisition of 1070 as being, together with the Watling Street, those of the Four Royal Roads (_quatuor chimini_) of England, the King's Highways, exempt from local jurisdiction and under the special guard of the King's Peace. Two are said to cross the length of the land, two its breadth. But their identification (except in the case of the main course of Watling Street) has been matter of antiquarian dispute from the 12th century downwards.[190] The very first chronicler who mentions them, Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes Ermine Street run from St. David's to Southampton, Icknield Street from St. David's to Newcastle, and the Fosse Way from Totnes in Devon to far Caithness; and his error has misled many succeeding authorities. That it _is_ an error, at least with regard to the Icknield Way and the Fosse Way, is sufficiently proved by the various mediaeval charters which mention these roads in connection with localities along their course as assigned by our received geography.

As to the main Watling Street there is no dispute. Running right across the island from the Irish Sea[191] to the Straits of Dover, it suggested to the minds of our English ancestors the shining track of the Milky Way from end to end of the heavens. Even so Chaucer, in his 'House of Fame,' sings:

"Lo there!" quod he, "cast up your eye, Se yonder, lo! the Galaxie, The whiche men clepe the Milky Way, For it is white, and some, parfay, Y-callen han it Watlinge-strete."

At Dover it still retains its name, and so it does in one part of its course through London (which it enters as the Edgware Road, and leaves as the Old Kent Road).[192]

A. 4.--This name, like that of the Ermine Street, is most probably derived from Teutonic mythology; the "Watlings" being the patrons of handicraft in the Anglo-Saxon Pantheon, and "Irmin" the War-god from whom "Germany" is called.[193] There is no reason to suppose that the roads of Britain had any Roman name, like those of Italy. The designations given them by our English forefathers show how deeply these mighty works impressed their imagination. The term "street" which they adopted for them shows, as Professor Freeman has pointed out, that such engineering ability was something quite new to their experience.[194] It is the Latin "Via _strata_" Anglicized, and describes no mere track, but the elaborately constructed Roman causeway, along which the soft alluvium was first dug away, and its place taken by layers of graduated road metal, with the surface frequently an actual pavement.[195]

A. 5.--For the assignment of the name Ermine Street to the Great North Road there is no ancient authority.[196] All we can say is that this theory is more probable than that set forth by Geoffrey of Monmouth. That the road existed in Roman times is certain, as London and York were the two chief towns in the island; and direct communication between them must have been of the first importance, both for military and economical reasons. Indeed it is probably older yet. (See p. 117.) But, with the exceptions already pointed out, the nomenclature of the Romano-British roads is almost wholly guess-work. Some archaeological maps show additional Watling Streets and Ermine Streets branching in all directions over the land,[197] presumably on the authority of local tradition. And these traditions may be not wholly unfounded; for the same motives which made the English immigrants of one district ascribe the handiwork of by-gone days to mythological powers might operate to the like end in another.

A. 6.--The origin of the names Ryknield Street and Akeman Street is beyond discovery;[198] but that of the Icknield Street is almost undoubtedly due to its connection with the great Icenian tribe, to whose territory it formed the only outlet.[199] By them, in the days of their greatness, it was probably driven to the Thames, the more southerly extension being perhaps later. It was never, as its present condition abundantly testifies, made into a regular Roman "Street." The final syllable may possibly, as Guest suggests, be the A.S. _hild_ = war.

A. 7.--Besides these main routes, a whole network of minor roads must have connected the multitudinous villages and towns of Roman Britain, a fact which is borne witness to by the very roundabout route often given in the 'Itinerary' of Antoninus between places which we know were directly connected.[200] Moreover this network must have been at least as close as that of our present railways, and probably approximated to that of our present roads.

SECTION B.

Romano-British towns--Ancient lists--Methods of identification--Dense rural population--Remains in Cam valley--Coins--Thimbles--Horseshoes.

B. 1.--Of these many Romano-British towns we have five contemporary lists; those of Ptolemy in the 2nd century, of the Antonine 'Itinerary' in the 3rd, of the 'Notitia'[201] in the 5th, and those of Nennius and of the Ravenna Geographer, composed while the memory of the Roman occupation was still fresh. Ptolemy and Nennius profess to give complete catalogues; the 'Itinerary' and 'Notitia' contain only incidental references; while the Ravenna list, though far the most copious, is expressly stated to be composed only of selected names. Of these it has no fewer than 236, while the 'Notitia' gives 118, Ptolemy 60, and Nennius 28 (to which Marcus Anchoreta adds 5 more).

B. 2.--With this mass of material[202] it might seem to be an easy task to locate every Roman site in Britain; especially as Ptolemy gives the latitude (and sometimes the longitude[203] also) of every place he mentions, and the 'Itinerary' the distances between its stations. Unfortunately it is quite otherwise; and of the whole number barely fifty can be at all certainly identified, while more than half cannot even be guessed at with anything like reasonable probability. To begin with, the text of every one of these authorities is corrupt to a degree incredible; in Ptolemy we find _Nalkua_, for example, where the 'Itinerary' and Ravenna lists give _Calleva_; _Simeni_ figures for _Iceni_, _Imensa_ for _Tamesis_. The 'Itinerary' itself reads indiscriminately _Segeloco_ and _Ageloco_, _Lagecio_ and _Legeolio_; and examples might be multiplied indefinitely. In Nennius, particularly, the names are so disguised that, with two or three exceptions, their identification is the merest guess-work; _Lunden_ is unmistakable, and _Ebroauc_ is obviously York; but who shall say what places lie hid under _Meguaid_, _Urnath_, _Guasmoric_, and _Celemon_? And if this corruption is bad amongst the names, it absolutely runs riot amongst the numbers, both in Ptolemy and the 'Itinerary,' so that the degrees of the former and the distances of the latter are alike grievously untrustworthy guides. Ptolemy, for example, says that the longest day in London is 18 hours, an obvious mistake for 17, as the context clearly shows. There is further the actual equation of error in each authority: Ptolemy, for all his care, has confused Exeter (_Isca Damnoniorum_) with the more famous _Isca Silurum_ (Caerleon-on-Usk); and there are blunders in his latitude and longitude which cannot wholly be ascribed to textual corruption. Still another difficulty is that then, as now, towns quite remote from each other bore the same name, or names very similar. Not only were two called _Isca_, but three were _Venta_, two _Calleva_, two _Segontium_, and no fewer than seven _Magna_; while _Durobrivae_ is only too like to _Durocobrivae_, _Margiodunum_ to _Moridunum_, _Durnovaria_ to _Durovernum_, etc. The last name even gets confounded with _Dubris_ by transcribers.

B. 3.--In all the lists we are struck by the extraordinary preponderance of northern names. Half the sites given by Ptolemy lie north of the Humber, and this is also the case with the Ravenna list, while in the 'Notitia' the proportion is far greater. In the last case this is due to the fact that the military garrisons, with which the catalogue is concerned, were mainly quartered in the north, and a like explanation probably holds good for the earlier and later lists also. Nennius, as is to be expected, draws most of his names from the districts which the Saxons had not yet reached; all being given with the Celtic prefix _Caer_ (=city).

B. 4.--Amid all these snares the most certain identification of a Roman site is furnished by the discovery of inscriptions relating to the special troops with which the name is associated in historical documents. When, for example, we find in the Roman station at Birdoswald, on the Wall of Hadrian, an inscription recording the occupation of the spot by a Dacian cohort, and read in the 'Notitia' that such a cohort was posted at _Amboglanna per lineam Valli_, we are sure that Amboglanna and Birdoswald are identical. This method, unfortunately, helps us very little except on the Wall, for the legionary inscriptions elsewhere are found in many places with which history does not particularly associate the individual legions thus commemorated.[204] However, the special number of such traces of the Second Legion at Caerleon, the Twentieth at Chester, and the Sixth at York, would alone justify us in certainly determining those places to be the Isca, Deva, and Eboracum given as their respective head-quarters in our documentary and historical evidence.

B. 5.--In the case of York another proof is available; for the name, different as it sounds, can be traced, by a continuous stream of linguistic development, through the Old English Eorfowic to the Roman _Eboracum_. In the same way the name of _Dubris_ has unmistakably survived in Dover, _Lemannae_ in Lympne, _Regulbium_ in Reculver. _Colonia, Glevum_, _Venta, Corinium, Danum_, and _Mancunium_, with the suffix "chester,"[205] have become Colchester, Gloucester, Winchester, Cirencester, Doncaster, and Manchester. Lincoln is _Lindum Colonia_, Richborough, _Ritupis_; while the phonetic value of the word London has remained absolutely unaltered from the very first, and varies but slightly even in its historical orthography.

B. 6.--With names of this class, of which there are about thirty, for a starting-point, we can next, by the aid of our various lists (especially Ptolemy's, which gives the tribe in which each town lies, and the 'Itinerary'), assign, with a very high degree of probability, some thirty more--similarity of name being still more or less of a guide. For example, when midway between _Venta_ (Winchester) and _Sorbiodunum_ (Sarum) the 'Itinerary' places _Brige_, and the name _Broughton_ now occupies this midway spot, _Brige_ and _Broughton_ may be safely assumed to be the same. This method shows Leicester to be the Roman _Ratae_, Carlisle to be _Luguvallum_, Newcastle _Pons Aelii_, etc., with so much probability that none of these identifications have been seriously disputed amongst antiquaries; while few are found to deny that Cambridge represents _Camboricum_,[206] Huntingdon (or Godmanchester) _Durolipons_, Silchester _Calleva_, etc. A list of all the sites which may be said to be fairly certified will be found at the end of this chapter.

B. 7.--Beyond them we come to about as many more names in our ancient catalogues of which all we can say is that we know the district to which they belong, and may safely apply them to one or other of the existing Roman sites in that district; the particular application being disputed with all the heat of the _odium archaeologicum_. Thus _Bremetonacum_ was certainly in Lancashire; but whether it is now Lancaster, or Overborough, or Ribchester, we will not say; _Caesaromagum_ was certainly in Essex; but was it Burghstead, Widford, or Chelmsford? And was the original _Camalodunum_ at Colchester, Lexden, or Maldon?

B. 8.--And, yet further, we find, especially in the Ravenna list, multitudes of names with nothing whatever to tell us of their whereabouts; though nearly all have been seized upon by rival antiquaries, and ascribed to this, that, and the other of the endless Roman sites which meet us all over the country.[207]

B. 9.--For it must be remembered that there are very few old towns in England where Roman remains have not been found, often in profusion; and even amongst the villages such finds are exceedingly common wherever excavations on any large scale have been undertaken. Thus in the Cam valley, where the "coprolite" digging[208] resulted in the systematic turning over of a considerable area, their number is astounding, proving the existence of a teeming population. Many thousands of coins were turned up, scarcely ever in hordes, but scattered singly all over the land, testifying to the amount of petty traffic which must have gone on generation after generation. For these coins are very rarely of gold or silver, and amongst them are found the issues of every Roman Emperor from Augustus to Valentinian III. And, besides the coins, the soil was found to teem with fragments of Roman pottery; while the many "ashpits" discovered--as many as thirty in a single not very large field--have furnished other articles of domestic use, such as thimbles.[209] Even horseshoes have been found, though their use only came in with the 5th century of our era.[210]

B. 10.--Now there is no reason for supposing that the Cam valley was in any way an exceptionally prosperous or populous district in the Roman period. It contained but one Roman town of even third-class importance, Cambridge, and very few of the "villas" in which the great landed proprietors resided. The wealth of remains which it has furnished is merely a by-product of the "coprolite" digging, and it is probable that equally systematic digging would have like results in almost any alluvial district in the island. We may therefore regard it as fairly established that these districts were as thickly peopled under the Romans as at any other period of history, and that the agricultural population of our island has never been larger than in the 3rd and 4th centuries, till its great development in the 19th.

SECTION C.

Fortification of towns late--Chief Roman centres--London--York--Chester--Bath--Silchester--Remains there found--Romano-British handicrafts--Pottery--Basket work--Mining--Rural life--Villas--Forests--Hunting dogs--Husbandry--Britain under the _Pax Romana_.

C. 1.--The profound peace which reigned in these rural districts is shown by the fact that Roman weapons are the rarest of all finds, far less common than the earlier British or the ensuing Saxon.[211] At the same time it is worthy of note that every Roman town which has been excavated has been found to be fortified, often on a most formidable scale. Thus at London there still remains visible a sufficiently large fragment of the wall to show that it must have been at least thirty feet high, while that of Silchester was nine feet thick, with a fosse of no less than thirty yards in width. And at Cirencester the river Churn or Corin (from which the town took its name _Corinium_) was made to flow round the ramparts, which consisted first of an outer facing of stone, then of a core of concrete, and finally an earthen embankment within, the whole reaching a width of at least four yards. It is probable, however, that these defences, like those of so many of the Gallic cities, and like the Aurelian walls of Rome itself; belong to the decadent period of Roman power, and did not exist (except in the northern garrisons and the great legionary stations, York, Chester, and Caerleon) during the golden age of Roman Britain.[212]

C. 2.--Their circuit, where it has been traced, furnishes a rough gauge of the comparative importance of the Roman towns of Britain. Far at the head stands London, where the names of Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Moorgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldgate still mark the ancient boundary line, five miles in extent (including the river-front), nearly twice that of any other town.[213] And abundant traces of the existence of a flourishing suburb have been discovered on the southern bank of the river. To London ran nearly all the chief Roman roads, and the shapeless block now called London Stone was once the _Milliarium_ from which the distances were reckoned along their course throughout the land.[214]

C. 3.--The many relics of the Roman occupation to be seen in the Museum at the Guildhall bear further testimony to the commercial importance of the City in those early days, an importance primarily due, as we have already seen, to the natural facilities for crossing the Thames at London Bridge.[215] The greatness of Roman London seems, however, to have been purely commercial. We do not even know that it was the seat of government for its own division of Britain. It was not a Colony, nor (in spite of the exceptional strength of the site, surrounded, as it was, by natural moats)[216] does it ever appear as of military importance till the campaign of Theodosius at the very end of the chapter.[217] In the 'Notitia' it figures as the head-quarters of the Imperial Treasury, and about the same date we learn that the name Augusta had been bestowed upon the town, as on Caerleon and on so many others throughout the Empire, though the older "London" still remained unforgotten.[218]

C. 4.--But, so far as Britain had a recognized capital at all, York and not London best deserved that name. For here was the chief military nerve-centre of the land, the head-quarters of the Army, where the Commander-in-Chief found himself in ready touch with the thick array of garrisons holding every strategic point along the various routes by which any invader who succeeded in forcing the Wall would penetrate into the land. At York, accordingly, the Emperors who visited Britain mostly held their court; beginning with Hadrian, who here established the Sixth Legion which he had brought over with him, possibly incorporating with it the remains of the Ninth, traces of which are here found. And here it remained permanently quartered to the very end of the Roman occupation, as abundant inscriptions, etc. testify. One of these, found in the excavations for the railway station, is a brass tablet with a dedication (in Greek) to _The Gods of the Head Praetorium_ [[Greek: theois tois tou haegemonikou praitoriou]], bearing witness to the essential militarism of the city.

C. 5.--A Praetorium, moreover, was not merely a military centre. It was also, as at Jerusalem, a Judgment Hall; and here, probably, the _Juridicus Britanniae_[219] exercised his functions, which would seem to have been something resembling those of a Lord Chief Justice. Precedents laid down by his Court are quoted as still in force even by the Codex of Justinian (555). One of these incidentally lets us know that the Romans kept up not only a British Army, but a British Fleet in being.[220] The latter, probably, as well as the former, had its head-quarters at York, where the Ouse of old furnished a far more available waterway than now. Even so late as 1066 the great fleet of Harold Hardrada could anchor only a few miles off, at Riccall: and there is good evidence that in the Roman day the river formed an extensive "broad" under the walls of York itself. As at Portsmouth and Plymouth to-day, the presence of officers and seamen of the Imperial Navy must have added to the military bustle in the streets of Eboracum; while tesselated pavements, unknown in the ruder fortresses of the Wall, testify to the softer side of social life in a garrison town.

C. 6.--Chester [Deva] was also a garrison town, the head-quarters of the Twentieth Legion; so was Caerleon-upon-Usk [Isca], with the Second. A detachment was almost certainly detailed from one or other of these to hold Wroxeter [Uriconium], midway between them;[221] thus securing the line of the Marches between the wild districts of Wales and the more fertile and settled regions eastward. And the name of Leicester records the fact (not otherwise known to us) that here too was a military centre; probably sufficient to police the rest of the island.[222]

C. 7.--Gloucester, Colchester, and Lincoln, as being Colonies, may have been also, perhaps, always fortified, and possibly garrisoned. But in the ordinary Romano-British town, such as London, Silchester, or Bath,[223] the life was probably wholly civilian. The fortifications, if the place ever had any, were left to decay or removed, the soldiery were withdrawn or converted into a mere _gendarmerie_, and under the shield of the _Pax Romana_, the towns were as open as now. And as little as now did they look forward to a time when each would have to become a strongly-held place of arms girded in by massive ramparts, yet destined to prove all too weak against the sweep of barbarian invasion.

C. 8.--On most of these sites continuous occupation for many subsequent ages has blotted out the vestiges of their Roman day. Every town has a tendency literally to bury its past; and the larger the town the deeper the burial. Thus at London the Roman pavements, etc. found are some twenty feet below the present surface, at Lincoln some six or seven, and so forth. To learn how a Roman town was actually laid out we must have recourse to those places which for some reason have not been resettled since their destruction at the Anglo-Saxon conquest, such as Wroxeter and Silchester, where the remains accordingly lie only a foot or two below the ground. The former has been little explored, but the latter has for the last ten years been systematically excavated under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries, the portions unearthed being reburied year by year, after careful examination and record.[224]

C. 9.--The greater part of the site has thus been already (1903) dealt with; proving the town to have been laid out on a regular plan, with straight streets dividing it, like an American city, into rectangular blocks. Twenty-eight of these have, so far, been excavated. They are from 100 to 150 yards in length and breadth, arranged, like the blocks in a modern town, with houses all round, and a central space for gardens, back-yards, etc. The remains found (including coins from Caligula to Arcadius) prove that the site was occupied during the whole of the Roman period. Originally it was, in all probability, one of the towns built for the Britons by Agricola[225] on the distinctive Roman pattern, with a central forum, town hall, baths, temples, and an amphitheatre outside the city limits.

C. 10.--The forum was flanked by a vast basilica, no less than 325 feet in length by 125 in breadth, with apses of 39 feet radius.[226] A smaller edifice of basilican type is generally supposed to have been a Christian church. It stands east and west, and consists of a nave 30 feet long by 10 broad, flanked by 5-feet aisles, with a narthex of 7 feet (extending right across the building) at the east end, and at the west an apse of 10 feet radius, having in the centre a tesselated pavement 6 feet square, presumably for the Altar.[227]

C. 11.--The main street of Silchester ran east and west, and _may_ have been the main road from London to Bath; while that which crosses it at the forum was perhaps an extension of the Icknield Way from Wallingford to Winchester. A third road led straight to Old Sarum,[228] and there may have been others. Silchester lies about half-way between Reading and Basingstoke.

C. 12.--The relics of domestic life found indicate a high order of peaceful civilization. Abundance of domestic pottery (some of it the glazed ware manufactured at Caistor on the Nen), many bones of domestic animals (amongst them the cat),[229] finger-rings with engraved gems, and the like, have been discovered in the old wells[230] and ashpits. More remarkable was the unearthing (in 1899) of the plant of a silver refinery,[231] showing that the method employed was analogous to that in vogue amongst the Japanese to-day, and that bone-ash was used in the construction of the hearths.[232] The houses were mainly built of red clay (on a foundation wall of flint and mortar) filled into a timber frame-work and supported by lath or wattle. The exterior was stamped with ornamental patterns, as in modern "parjetting" (which may thus very possibly be an actual survival from Roman days). This clay has in most cases soaked away into a mere layer of red mud overlying the pavements; but in 1901 there was unearthed a house in which a fortunate fire had calcined it into permanent brick, still retaining the parjetting and the impress of wattle and timber. But the whole site has not provided a single weapon of any sort or kind, and the construction of the defences clearly shows that they formed no part of the original plan on which the place was laid out.[233] They were probably, as we have said, added at the break up of the Pax Romana.

C. 13.--With the exception of the silver refinery above mentioned, nothing has appeared to tell us what handicrafts were practised at Silchester; but such industries formed a noteworthy feature of Romano-British life. Naturally the largest traces have been left in connection with that most imperishable of all commodities, pottery. The kilns where it was made are frequently met with in excavations; and individual vases, jugs,[234] cups, and amphorae (often of very large dimensions) constantly appear. Many of these are beautifully modelled and finished, and not unseldom glazed in various ways. But there is no evidence that the delicate "Samian" ware[235] was ever manufactured in Britain, though every house of any pretensions possessed a certain store of it. The indigenous art of basket-making[236] also continued as a speciality of Britain under the Romans, and the indigenous mining for tin, lead, iron, and copper was developed by them on the largest scale. In every district where these metals are found, in Cornwall, in Somerset, in Wales, in Derbyshire, and in Sussex, traces of Roman work are apparent, dating from the very beginning of the occupation to the very end. The earliest known Roman inscription found in Britain is one of A.D. 49 (the year before Ostorius subdued the Iceni) on a pig of lead from the Mendips,[237] and similar pigs bearing the Labarum, _i.e._ not earlier than Constantine presumably, have been dredged up in the Thames below London.[238] Inscriptions also survive to tell us of a few amongst the many other trades which must have figured in Romano-British life,--goldsmiths, silversmiths, iron-workers, stone-cutters, sculptors, architects, eye-doctors, are all thus commemorated.[239]

C. 14.--But then, as always, the life of Britain was mainly rural. The evidence for this unearthed in the Cam valley has already been spoken of, and in every part of England the "villas" of the great Roman landowners are constantly found. Hundreds have already been discovered, and year by year the list is added to. One of the most recent of the finds is that at Greenwich in 1901, and the best known, perhaps, that at Brading in the Isle of Wight. Here, as elsewhere, the tesselated pavements, the elaborate arrangements for warming (by hypocausts conveying hot air to every room), the careful laying out of the apartments, all testify to the luxury in which these old landlords lived. For the "villa" was the Squire's Hall of the period, and was provided, like the great country houses of to-day, with all the best that contemporary life could give.[240] And, like these also, it was the centre of a large circle of humbler dependencies wherein resided the peasantry of the estate and the domestics of the mansion.[241] The existence amongst these of huntsmen (as inscriptions tell) reminds us that not only was the chase, then as now, popular amongst the squirearchy, but that there was a far larger scope for its exercise. Great forests still covered a notable proportion of the soil (the largest being that which spread over the whole Weald of Sussex)[242], and were tenanted by numberless deer and wild swine, along with the wolves, and, perhaps, bears,[243] that fed upon them.

C. 15.--Hence it came about that during the Roman occupation the British products we find most spoken of by classical authors are the famous breeds of hunting-dogs produced by our island. Oppian[244] [A.D. 140] gives a long description of one sort, which he describes as small [Greek: _baion_], awkward [Greek: _guron_], long-bodied, rough-haired, not much to look at, but excellent at scenting out their game and tackling it when found--like our present otter-hounds. The native name for this strain was Agasseus. Nemesianus[245] [A.D. 280] sings the swiftness of British hounds; and Claudian[246] refers to a more, formidable kind, used for larger game, equal indeed to pulling down a bull. He is commonly supposed to mean some species of mastiff; but, according to Mr. Elton[247] mastiffs are a comparatively recent importation from Central Asia, so that a boarhound of some sort is more probably intended, such as may be seen depicted (along with its smaller companion) on the fine tesselated pavement preserved in the Corinium Museum at Cirencester.[248] Whatever the creature was, it is probably the same as the Scotch "fighting dog," which figures in the 4th century polemics as a huge massive brute of savage temper[249] and evil odour,[250] to which accordingly controversialists rejoice in likening their ecclesiastical opponents.[251] Jerome incidentally tells us that "Alpine" dogs were of this Scotch breed, which thus may possibly be the original strain now developed into the St. Bernard.

C. 16.--But the existence of such tracts of forest, even when very extensive, is quite compatible (as the present state of France shows us) with a highly developed civilization, and a population thick upon the ground. And that a very large area of our soil came to be under the plough at least before the Roman occupation ended is proved by the fact that eight hundred wheat-ships were dispatched from this island by Julian the Apostate for the support of his garrisons in Gaul. The terms in which this transaction is recorded suggest that wheat was habitually exported (on a smaller scale, doubtless) from Britain to the Continent. At all events enough was produced for home consumption, and under the shadow of the Pax Romana the wild and warlike Briton became a quiet cultivator of the ground, a peaceful and not discontented dependent of the all-conquering Power which ruled the whole civilized world.

C. 17.--In the country the husbandman ploughed and sowed and reaped and garnered,[252] sometimes as a freeholder, oftener as a tenant; the miller was found upon every stream; the fisher baited his hook and cast his net in fen and mere; the Squire hunted and feasted amid his retainers (who were usually slaves); his wife and daughters occupied themselves in the management of the house. The language of Rome was everywhere spoken, the literature of Rome was read amongst the educated classes; while amongst the peasantry the old Celtic tongue, and with it, we may be sure, the old Celtic legends and songs, held its own. Intercourse was easy between the various districts; for along every great road a series of posting-stations, each with its stud of relays, was available for the service of travellers. In the towns were to be found schools, theatres, and courts of justice, with shops of every sort and kind, while travelling pedlars supplied the needs of the rural districts. No one, except actual soldiers, dreamt of bearing arms, or indeed was allowed to do so,[253] and the general aspect of the land was as wholly peaceful as now. But every one had to pay a substantial proportion of his income in taxes, in the collection of which there was not seldom a notable amount of corruption, as amongst the publicans of Judaea. In the bad days of the decadence this became almost intolerable;[254] but so long as the central administration retained its integrity the amount exacted was no more than left to every class a fair margin for the needs, and even the enjoyments, of life.

SECTION D.

The unconquered North--Hadrian's Wall--Upper and Lower Britain--Romano-British coinage--Wall of Antoninus--Britain Pro-consular.

D. 1.--The weak point of all this peaceful development was that the northern regions of the island remained unsubdued. It was all very well for the Roman Treasury, with true departmental shortsightedness, to declare (as Appian[255] reports) that North Britain was a worthless district, which could never be profitable [Greek: [_euphoron_]] to hold. The cost would have been cheap in the end. All through the Roman occupation it was from the north that trouble was liable to arise, and ultimately it was the ferocious independence of the Highland clans that brought Roman Britain to its doom. The Saxons, as tradition tells us, would never have been invited into the land but for the ravages of these Picts; and, in sober history, it may well be doubted whether they could ever have effected a permanent settlement here had not the Britons, in defending our shores, been constantly exposed to Pictish attacks from the rear.

D. 2.--Thus our earliest notice of Britain in this period tells us that Hadrian (A.D. 120), our first Imperial visitor since Claudius (A.D. 44), found it needful (after a revolt which cost many lives, and involved, as it seems, the final destruction of the unlucky Ninth Legion, which had already fared so badly in Boadicea's rebellion[256]) to supplement Agricola's rampart, between Forth and Clyde, with another from sea to sea, between Tynemouth and Solway, "dividing the Romans from the barbarians."[257] This does not mean that the district thus isolated was definitely abandoned,[258] but that its inhabitants were so imperfectly Romanized that the temptation to raid the more civilized lands to the south had better be obviated. The Wall of Hadrian marked the real limit of Roman Britain: beyond it was a "march," sometimes strongly, more often feebly, garrisoned, but never effectually occupied, much less civilized. The inhabitants, indeed, seem to have rapidly lost what civilization they had. Dion Cassius describes them, in the next generation, as far below the Caledonians who opposed Agricola, a mere horde of squalid and ferocious cannibals,[259] going into battle stark-naked (like their descendants the Galwegians a thousand years later),[260] having neither chief nor law, fields nor houses. The name Attacotti, by which they came finally to be known, probably means _Tributary_, and describes their nominal status towards Rome.

D. 3.--How hopeless the task of effectually incorporating these barbarians within the Empire appeared to Hadrian is shown by the extraordinary massiveness of the Wall which he built[261] to keep them out from the civilized Provinces[262] to the southwards. "Uniting the estuaries of Tyne and Solway it chose the strongest line of defence available. Availing itself of a series of bold heights, which slope steadily to the south, but are craggy precipices to the north, as if designed by Nature for this very purpose, it pursued its mighty course across the isthmus with a pertinacious, undeviating determination which makes its remains unique in Europe, and one of the most inspiriting scenes in Britain."[263] Its outer fosse (where the nature of the ground permits) is from 30 to 40 feet wide and some 20 deep, so sloped that the whole was exposed to direct fire from the Wall, from which it is separated by a small glacis [_linea_] 10 or 12 feet across. Beyond it the upcast earth is so disposed as to form the glacis proper, for about 50 feet before dipping to the general ground level. The Wall itself is usually 8 feet thick, the outer and inner faces formed of large blocks of freestone, with an interior core of carefully-filled-in rubble. The whole thus formed a defence of the most formidable character, testifying strongly to the respect in which the valour of the Borderers against whom it was constructed was held by Hadrian and his soldiers.[264]

D. 4.--This expedition of Hadrian is cited by his biographer, Aelius Spartianus, as the most noteworthy example of that invincible activity which led him to take personal cognizance of every region in his Empire: "_Ante omnes enitebatur ne quid otiosum vel emeret aliquando vel pasceret."_ His contempt for slothful self-indulgence finds vent in his reply to the doggerel verses of Florus, who had written:

_Ego nolo Caesar esse, ["To be Caesar I'd not care, Ambulare per Britannos, Through the Britons far to fare, Scythicas pati pruinas_. Scythian frost and cold to bear."]

Hadrian made answer:

_Ego nolo Florus esse, ["To be Florus I'd not care, Ambulare per tabernas, Through the tavern-bars to fare, Cimices pati rotundas_. Noxious insect-bites to bear."]

To us its special interest (besides the Wall) is found in the bronze coins commemorating the occasion, the first struck with special reference to Britain since those of Claudius. These are of various types, but all of the year 120 (the third Consulate of Hadrian); and the reverse mostly represents the figure so familiar on our present bronze coinage, Britannia, spear in hand, on her island rock, with her shield beside her.[265] This type was constantly repeated with slight variations in the coinage of the next hundred years; and thus, when, after an interval of twelve centuries, the British mint began once more, in the reign of Charles the Second, to issue copper, this device was again adopted, and still abides with us. The very large number of types (approaching a hundred) of the Romano-British coinage, from this reign to that of Caracalla, shows that Hadrian inaugurated the system of minting coins not only with reference to Britain, but for special local use. They were doubtless struck within the island; but we can only conjecture where the earliest mints were situated.

D. 5.--Twenty years after Hadrian's visit we again find (A.D. 139) some little trouble in the north, owing to a feud between the Brigantes and Genuini, a clan of whom nothing is known but the name. The former seem to have been the aggressors, and were punished by the confiscation of a section of their territory by Lollius Urbicus, the Legate of Antoninus Pius; who further "shut off the excluded barbarians by a turf wall" (_muro cespitio submotis[266] barbaris ducto_). The context connects this operation with the Brigantian troubles; but it is certain that Lollius repaired and strengthened Agricola's rampart between Forth and Clyde. His name is found in inscriptions along that line,[267] and that of Antoninus is frequent. This work consisted of a _vallum_ some 40 miles in length, from Carriden to Dumbarton, with fortified posts at frequent intervals. It is locally known as "Graham's Dyke," and, since 1890, has been systematically explored by the Glasgow Archaeological Society. It is in the strictest sense "a turf wall"--no mere grass-grown earthwork, but regularly built of squared sods in place of stones (sometimes on a stone base). Roman engineers looked upon such a rampart as being the hardest of all to construct.

SECTION E.

Commodus Britannicus--Ulpius Marcellus--Murder of Perennis--Era of military turbulence--Pertinax--Albinus--British Army defeated at Lyons--Severus--Caledonian war--Severus overruns Highlands.

E. 1.--It may very probably be owing to the energy of Lollius that Britain, "Upper" and "Lower" together as it seems, as inscriptions tell us, was about this date ranked amongst the Senatorial Provinces of the Empire, the Pro-consul being C. Valerius Pansa. That it should have been made a Pro-consulate shows (as is pointed out on p. 142) that they were now considered amongst the more peaceful governorships. In fact, though some slight disturbances threatened at the death of Antoninus (A.D. 161), the country remained quiet till Commodus came to the throne (A.D. 180). Then, however, we hear of a serious inroad of the northern barbarians, who burst over the Roman Wall and were not repulsed without a hard campaign. The Roman commander was Ulpius Marcellus, a harsh but devoted officer, who fared like a common soldier, and insisted on the strictest vigilance, being himself "the most sleepless of generals."[268] The British Army, accordingly, swore by him, and were minded to proclaim him Emperor,[2] a matter which all but cost him his life at the hands of Commodus; who, however, contented himself with assuming, like Claudius, the title of Britannicus, in virtue of this success.[2] The further precaution was taken of cashiering not only Ulpius but all the superior officers of this dangerous army; men of lower rank and less influence being substituted. The soldiers, however, defeated the design by breaking out into open mutiny, and tearing to pieces the "enemy of the Army," Perennis, Praefect of the Praetorian Guards, who had been sent from Rome (A.D. 185) to carry out the reform.[269]

E. 2.--This episode shows us how great a solidarity the Army of Britain had by this time developed. It was always the policy of Imperial Rome to recruit the forces stationed throughout the Provinces not from the natives around them, but from those of distant regions. Inscriptions tell that the British Legions were chiefly composed of Spaniards, Aquitanians, Gauls, Frisians, Dalmatians, and Dacians; while from the 'Notitia' we know that, in the 5th century, such distant countries as Mauretania, Libya, and even Assyria,[270] furnished contingents. Britons, in turn, served in Gaul, Spain, Illyria, Egypt, and Armenia, as well as in Rome itself.

E. 3.--The outburst which led to the slaughter of Perennis was but the dawn of a long era of military turbulence in Britain. First came the suppression of the revolt A.D. 187 by the new Legate,[271] Pertinax, who, at the peril of his life, refused the purple offered him by the mutineers,[272] and drafted fifteen hundred of the ringleaders into the Italian service of Commodus;[273] then Commodus died (A.D. 192), and Pertinax became one of the various pretenders to the Imperial throne; then followed his murder by Julianus, while Albinus succeeded to his pretensions as well as to his British government; then that of Julianus by Severus; then the desperate struggle between Albinus and Severus for the Empire; the crushing defeat (A.D. 197) of the British Army at Lyons, the death of Albinus,[274] and the final recognition of Severus[275] as the acknowledged ruler of the whole Roman world.

E. 4.--Of all the Roman Emperors Severus is the most closely connected with Britain. The long-continued political and military confusion amongst the conquerors had naturally excited the independent tribes of the north. In A.D. 201 the Caledonians beyond Agricola's rampart threatened it so seriously that Vinius Lupus, the Praetor, was fain to buy off their attack; and, a few years later, they actually joined hands with the nominally subject Meatae within the Pale, who thereupon broke out into open rebellion, and, along with them, poured down upon the civilized districts to the south. So extreme was the danger that the Prefect of Britain sent urgent dispatches to Rome, invoking the Emperor's own presence with the whole force of the Empire.

E. 5.--Severus, in spite of age and infirmity,[276] responded to the call, and, in a marvellously short time, appeared in Britain, bringing with him his worthless sons, Caracalla[277] and Geta[278]--"my Antonines," as he fondly called them,[279] though his life was already embittered by their wickedness,--and Geta's yet more worthless mother, Julia Domna. Leaving her and her son in charge south of Hadrian's Wall, Severus and Caracalla undertook a punitive expedition[280] beyond it, characterized by ferocity so exceptional[281] that the names both of Caledonians and Meatae henceforward disappear from history. The Romans on this occasion penetrated further than even Agricola had gone, and reached Cape Wrath, where Severus made careful astronomical observations.[282]

E. 6.--But the cost was fearful. Fifty thousand Roman soldiers perished through the rigour of the climate and the wiles of the desperate barbarians; and Severus felt the north so untenable that he devoted all his energies to strengthening Hadrian's Wall,[283] so as to render it an impregnable barrier beyond which the savages might be allowed to range as they pleased.[284]

E. 7.--In what, exactly, his additions consisted we do not know, but they were so extensive that his name is no less indissolubly connected with the Wall than that of Hadrian. The inscriptions of the latter found in the "Mile Castles" show that the line was his work, and that he did not merely, as some have thought, build the series of "stations" to support the "Vallum." But it is highly probable that Severus so strengthened the Wall both in height and thickness as to make it[285] far more formidable than Hadrian had left it. For now it was intended to be the actual _limes_ of the Empire.

SECTION F.

Severus completes Hadrian's Wall--Mile Castles--Stations--Garrison--Vallum--Rival theories--Evidence--Remains--Coins--Altars--Mithraism--Inscription to Julia Domna--"Written Rock" on Gelt--Cilurnum aqueduct.

F. 1.--It is to Severus, therefore, that we owe the final development of this magnificent rampart, the mere remains of which are impressive so far beyond all that description or drawing can tell. Only those who have stood upon the heights by Peel Crag and seen the long line of fortification crowning ridge after ridge in endless succession as far as the eye can reach, can realize the sense of the vastness and majesty of Roman Imperialism thus borne in upon the mind. And if this is so now that the Wall is a ruin scarcely four feet high, and, but for its greater breadth, indistinguishable from the ordinary local field-walls, what must it have been when its solid masonry rose to a height of over twenty feet; with its twenty-three strong fortresses[286] for the permanent quarters of the garrison, its great gate-towers[287] at every mile for the accommodation of the detachments on duty, and its series of watch-turrets which, at every three or four hundred yards, placed sentinels within sight and call of each other along the whole line from sea to sea?

F. 2.--Of all this swarming life no trace now remains. So entirely did it cease to be that the very names of the stations have left no shadow of memories on their sites. Luguvallum at the one end, and Pons Aelii at the other, have revived into importance as Carlisle and Newcastle,[288] but of the rest few indeed remain save as solitary ruins on the bare Northumbrian fells tenanted only by the flock and the curlew. But this very solitude in which their names have perished has preserved to us the means of recovering them. Thanks to it there is no part of Britain so rich in Roman remains and Roman inscriptions. At no fewer than twelve of these "stations" such have been already found relating to troops whom we know from the 'Notitia' to have been quartered at given spots _per lineam valli_. A Dacian cohort (for example) has thus left its mark at Birdoswald, and an Asturian at Chesters, thereby stamping these sites as respectively the _Amboglanna_ and _Cilurnum_, whose Dacian and Asturian garrisons the 'Notitia' records. The old walls of Cilurnum, moreover, are still clothed with a pretty little Pyrenaean creeper, _Erinus Hispanicus_, which these Asturian exiles must have brought with them as a memorial of their far-off home.

F. 3.--Many such small but vivid touches of the past meet those who visit the Wall. At "King Arthur's Well," for example, near Thirlwall, the tiny chives growing in the crevices of the rock are presumably descendants of those acclimatized there by Roman gastronomy. At Borcovicus ("House-steads") the wheel-ruts still score the pavement; at Cilurnum the hypocaust of the bath is still blackened with smoke, and at various points the decay of Roman prestige is testified to by the walling up of one half or the other in the wide double gates which originally facilitated the sorties of the garrisons.

F. 4.--The same decay is probably the key to the problem of the "Vallum," that standing crux to all archaeological students of the Wall. Along the whole line this mysterious earthwork keeps company with the Wall on the south, sometimes in close contact, sometimes nearly a mile distant. It has been diversely explained as an earlier British work, as put up by the Romans to cover the fatigue-parties engaged in building the Wall, and as a later erection intended to defend the garrison against attacks from the rear. Each of these views has been keenly debated; the last having the support of the late Dr. Bruce, the highest of all authorities on the mural antiquities. And excavations, even the very latest, have produced results which are claimed by each of the rival theories.[289]

F. 5.--Quite possibly all are in measure true. The "Vallum" as we now see it is obviously meant for defence against a southern foe. But the spade has given abundant evidence that the rampart has been altered, and that, in many places at least, it at one time faced northwards. Though not an entirely satisfactory solution of the problem, the following sequence of events would seem, on the whole, best to explain the phenomena with which we are confronted. Originally a British earthwork[290] defending the Brigantes against the cattle-lifting raids of their restless northern neighbours, the "Vallum" was adapted[291] for like purposes by the Romans, and that more than once. After being thus utilized, first, perhaps, by Agricola, and afterwards by Hadrian (for the protection of his working-parties engaged in quarrying stone for the outer fortifications), it became useless when the Wall was finally completed,[292] and remained a mere unfortified mound so long as the Roman power in Southern Britain continued undisturbed.

But when the garrison of the Wall became liable to attacks from the rear, the "Vallum" was once more repaired, very probably by Theodosius,[293] and this time with a ditch to the south, to enable the soldiers to meet, if needful, a simultaneous assault of Picts in front and Scots[294] or Saxons behind. Weak though it was as compared to the Wall, it would still take a good deal of storming, if stoutly held, and would effectually guard against any mere raid both the small parties marching along the Military Way[295] from post to post, and the cattle grazing along the rich meadows which frequently lie between the two lines of fortification.

F.6.--As we have said, the line of country thus occupied teems with relics of the occupation. Coins by the thousand, ornaments, fragments of statuary, inscriptions to the Emperors, to the old Roman gods, to the strange Pantheistic syncretisms of the later Mithraism[296], to unknown (perhaps local) deities such as Coventina, records of this, that, and the other body of troops in the garrison, personal dedications and memorials--all have been found, and are still constantly being found, in rich abundance. Of the whole number of Romano-British inscriptions known, nearly half belong to the Wall.[297]

F.7.--As an example of these inscriptions we may give one discovered at Caervoran (the Roman _Magna_), and now in the Newcastle Antiquarian Museum,[298] the interpretation of which has been a matter of considerable discussion amongst antiquaries. It is written in letters of the 3rd century and runs as follows:--

IMMINET · LEONIVIRGO · CAELES TI · SITV SPICIFERA · IVSTI · IN VENTRIXVRBIVM · CONDITRIX EXQVISMVNERIBVS · NOSSECON

TIGITDEOS · ERGOEADEMMATERDIVVM PAX · VIRTVS · CERES · DEA · SYRIA LANCEVITAMETIVRAPENSITANS IN · CAELOVISVMSYRIASIDVSEDI DIT · LIBYAE · COLENDVMINDE CVNCTIDIDICIMVS ITAINTELLEXITNVMINEINDVCTVS TVO · MARCVSCAECILIVSDO NATIANVS · MILITANS · TRIBVNVS INPRAEFECTODONO · PRINCIPIS.

Here we have ten very rough trochaic lines:

Imminet Leoni Virgo caelesti situ Spicifera, justi inventrix, urbium conditrix; Ex quis muneribus nosse contigit Deos. Ergo eadem Mater Divum, Pax, Virtus, Ceres, Dea Syria, lance vitam et jura pensitans. In caelo visum Syria sidus edidit Libyae colendum: inde cuncti didicimus. Ita intellexit, numine inductus tuo, Marcus Caecilius Donatianus, militans Tribunus in Praefecto, dono Principis.

This may be thus rendered:

O'er the Lion hangs the Virgin, in her place in heaven, With her corn-ear;--justice-finder, city-foundress, she: And in them that do such office Gods may still be known. She, then, is the Gods' own Mother, Peace, Strength, Ceres, all; Syria's Goddess, in her Balance weighing life and Law. Syria sent this Constellation shining in her sky Forth for Libya's worship:--thence we all have learnt the lore. Thus hath come to understanding, by the Godhead led, Marcus Caecilius Donatianus Serving now as Tribune-Prefect, by the Prince's grace.

F. 8.--These obscure lines Dr. Hodgkin refers to Julia Domna, the wife of Severus, the one Emperor that Africa gave to the Roman world. He was an able astrologer, and from early youth considered himself destined by his horoscope for the throne. He was thus guided by astrological considerations to take for his second wife a Syrian virgin, whose nativity he found to forecast queenship. As his Empress she shared in the aureole of divinity which rested upon all members of the Imperial family. This theory explains the references in the inscription to the constellation Virgo, with its chief star Spica, having Leo on the one hand and Libra on the other, also to the Syrian origin of Julia and her connection with Libya, the home of Severus. It may be added that Dr. Hodgkin's view is confirmed by the fact that this Empress figures, on coins found in Britain, as the Mother of the Gods, and also as Ceres. The first line may possibly have special reference to her influence in Britain during the reign of Severus and her stepson[299] Caracalla (who was also her second husband), Leo being a noted astrological sign of Britain.[300] The inscription was evidently put up in recognition of promotion gained by her favour, though the exact interpretation of _Tribunus in praefecto_ requires a greater knowledge of Roman military nomenclature than we possess. Dr. Hodgkin's "Tribune instead of Prefect" seems scarcely admissible grammatically.

F. 9.--Another inscription which may be mentioned is that referred to by Tennyson in 'Gareth and Lynette' (l. 172), which

"the vexillary Hath left crag-carven over the streaming Gelt."[301]

This is one of the many such records in the quarries south of the Wall telling of the labours of the fatigue-parties sent out by Severus to hew stones for his mighty work, and cut on rocks overhanging the river. It sets forth how a _vexillatio_[302] of the Second Legion was here engaged, under a lieutenant [_optio_] named Agricola, in the consulship of Aper and Maximus (A.D. 207);[303] perhaps as a guard over the actual workers, who were probably a _corvée_ of impressed natives.

F. 10.--Yet another inscription worth notice was unearthed in 1897, and tells how a water supply to Cilurnum was brought from a source in the neighbourhood through a subterraneous conduit by Asturian engineers under Ulpius Marcellus (A.D. 160). That this should have been done brings home to us the magnificent thoroughness with which Rome did her work. Cilurnum stood on a pure and perennial stream, the North Tyne, with a massively-fortified bridge, and thus could never be cut off from water; it was only some six acres in total area; yet in addition to the river it received a water supply which would now be thought sufficient for a fair-sized town.[304] Well may Dr. Hodgkin say that "not even the Coliseum of Vespasian or the Pantheon of Agrippa impresses the mind with a sense of the majestic strength of Rome so forcibly" as works like this, merely to secure the passage of a "little British stream, unknown to the majority even of Englishmen."

SECTION G.

Death of Severus--Caracalla and Geta--Roman citizenship--Extended to veterans--_Tabulae honestae, missionis_--Bestowed on all British provincials.

G. 1.--This mighty work kept Severus in Britain for the rest of his life. He incessantly watched over its progress, and not till it was completed turned his steps once more (A.D. 211) towards Rome. But he was not to reach the Imperial city alive. Scarcely had he completed the first stage of the journey than, at York, omens of fatal import foretold his speedy death. A negro soldier presented him with a cypress crown, exclaiming, "_Totum vicisti, totum fuisti. Nunc Deus esto victor_."[305] When he would fain offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, he found himself by mistake at the dark temple of Bellona; and her black victims were led in his train even to the very door of his palace, which he never left again. Dark rumours were circulated that Caracalla, who had already once attempted his father's life, and was already intriguing with his stepmother, was at the bottom of all this, and took good care that the auguries should be fulfilled. Anyhow, Severus never left York till his corpse was carried forth and sent off for burial at Rome. With his last breath he is said solemnly to have warned "my Antonines" that upon their own conduct depended the peace and well-being of the Empire which he had so ably won for them.[306]

G. 2.--The warning was, as usual, in vain. Caracalla and Julia were now free to work their will, and, having speedily got rid of her son Geta, entered upon an incestuous marriage. The very Caledonians, whose conjugal system was of the loosest,[307] cried shame;[308] but the garrison of the Wall which kept them off was, as we have seen, officered by Julia's creatures, and all beyond it was definitely abandoned,[309] not to be recovered for two centuries.[310] The guilty pair returned to Rome, and a hundred and thirty years elapsed before another Augustus visited Britain.[311]

G. 3.--They left behind them no longer a subject race of mere provincials, but a nation of full Roman citizens. For it was Caracalla, seemingly, who, by extending it to the whole Roman world, put the final stroke to the expansion, which had long been in progress, of this once priceless privilege; with its right of appeal to Caesar, of exemption from torture, of recognized marriage, and of eligibility to public office. Originally confined strictly to natives of Rome and of Roman Colonies, it was early bestowed _ipso facto_ on enfranchised slaves, and sometimes given as a compliment to distinguished strangers. After the Social War (B.C. 90) it was extended to all Italians, and Claudius (A.D. 50) allowed Messalina to make it purchasable ("for a great sum," as both the Acts of the Apostles and Dion Cassius inform us) by provincials.

G. 4.--And they could also earn it by service in the Imperial armies. A bronze tablet, found at Cilurnum,[312] sets forth that Antoninus Pius confers upon the _emeriti_, or time-expired veterans, of the Gallic, Asturian, Celtiberian, Spanish, and Dacian cohorts in Britain, who have completed twenty-five years' service with the colours, the right of Roman citizenship, and legalizes their marriages, whether existing or future.[313] As there is no reason to suppose that such discharged soldiers commonly returned to their native land, this system must have leavened the population of Britain with a considerable proportion of Roman citizens, even before Caracalla's edict. Besides its privileges, this freedom brought with it certain liabilities, pecuniary and other; and it was to extend the area of these that Caracalla took this apparently liberal step, which had been at least contemplated by more worthy predecessors[314] on philanthropic grounds. Any way, Britain was, by now, in the fullest sense Roman.

ROMANO-BRITISH PLACE-NAMES.[315]

TOWNS, ETC.

Aballaba = Watch-cross AESICA = GREAT CHESTERS AMBOGLANNA = BIRDOSWALD AQUAE (SULIS) = BATH BORCOVICUS = HOUSE-STEADS Branodunum = Brancaster _Braboniacum_ = Ribchester Brige = Broughton _Caesaromagum = Chelmsford_ Calcaria = Tadcaster Calleva = Silchester Camboricum = Cambridge Cataractonis = Catterick _Clausentum = Southampton_ CILURNUM = CHESTERS Colonia = Colchester Concangium = Kendal CORINIUM = CIRENCESTER DANUM = DONCASTER DEVA = CHESTER _Devonis = Devonport_ Dictis = Ambleside DUBRIS = DOVER DURNOVARIA = DORCHESTER Durobrivis = Rochester Durolipons = Godmanchester Durnovernum = Canterbury EBORACUM = YORK _Etocetum = Uttoxeter_ GLEVUM = GLOUCESTER Gobannium = Abergavenny ISCA SILURUM = CAERLEON Isca Damnoniorum = Exeter Isurium = Aldborough (York) LEMANNAE = LYMPNE LINDUM COLONIA = LINCOLN _Longovicum = Lancaster_ LONDINIUM = LONDON Lugovallum = Carlisle Magna = Caervoran Mancunium = Manchester _Moridunum = Seaton Muridunum = Caermarthen Olikana = Ilkley_ Pons Aelii = Newcastle Pontes = Staines PORTUS = PORTCHESTER _Procolitia = Carrawburgh_ RATAE = LEICESTER _Regnum = Chichester_ REGULBIUM = RECULVER RITUPIS = RICHBOROUGH Segedunum = Wall's End SORBIODUNUM = SARUM Spinae = Speen (Berks) URICONUM = WROXETER VENTA BELGARUM = WINCHESTER VENTA ICENONUM = CAISTOR-BY-NORWICH VENTA SILURUM = CAER GWENT VERULAMIUM = VERULAM Vindoballa = Rutchester Vindomara = Ebchester Vindolana = Little Chesters

RIVERS AND ESTUARIES.

Alaunus Fl. = Tweed Belisama Est. = Mouth of Mersey CLOTA EST. = FIRTH OF CLYDE _Cunio Fl. = Conway_ TUNA EST. = SOLWAY MORICAMBE EST. = MORCAMBE BAY SABRINA FL. = SEVERN Setantion Est. = Mouth of Ribble Seteia Est. = Mouth of Dee TAMARIS FL. = TAMAR TAMESIS FL. = THAMES Tava Est. = Firth of Tay _Tuerobis Fl. = Tavy_ VARAR EST. = MORAY FIRTH Vedra Fl. = Wear

CAPES AND ISLANDS.

BOLERIUM PR. = LAND'S END CANTIUM PR. = N. FORELAND Epidium Pr. = Mull of Cantire Herculis Pr. = Hartland Point MANNA I. = MAN MONA I. = ANGLESEY Noranton Pr. = Mull of Galloway OCRINUM PR. = THE LIZARD OCTAPITARUM PR. = ST. DAVID'S HEAD Orcas Pr. = Dunnet Head Taexalum Pr. = Kinnaird Head TANATOS I. = THANET VECTIS I. = I. OF WIGHT VIRVEDRUM PR. = CAPE WRATH

N.B.--Many of these names vary notably in our several authorities: e.g. Manna is also written Mona, Monaoida, Monapia, Mevania.

CHAPTER. V

THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN, A.D. 211-455

SECTION A.

Era of Pretenders--Probus--Vandlebury--First notice of Saxons--Origin of name--Count of the Saxon Shore--Carausius--Allectus--Last Romano-British coinage--Britain Mistress of the Sea--Reforms of Diocletian--Constantius Chlorus--Re-conquest of Britain--Diocletian provinces--Diocletian persecution--The last "Divus"--General scramble for Empire--British Army wins for Constantine--Christianity established.

A. 1.--After the death of Severus in A.D. 211, Roman historians tell us nothing more concerning Britain till we come to the rise of the only other Emperor who died at York, Constantius Chlorus. During the miserable period which the wickedness of Caracalla brought upon the Roman world, when Pretender after Pretender flits across the scene, most to fail, some for a moment to succeed, but all alike to end their brief course in blood, our island remained fairly quiet. The Army of Britain made one or two futile pronunciamentos (the least unsuccessful being those for Postumus in A.D. 258, and Victorinus in A.D. 265), and in 277 the Emperor Probus, probably to keep it in check, leavened it with a large force recruited from amongst his Vandal prisoners,[316] whose name may, perhaps, still survive in Vandlebury Camp, on the Gog-Magog[317] Hills, near Cambridge. But not till the energy and genius of Diocletian began to bring back to order the chaos into which the Roman world had fallen does Britain play any real part in the higher politics.

A. 2.--Then, however, we suddenly find ourselves confronted with names destined to exert a supreme influence on the future of our land. The Saxons from the Elbe, and the Franks from the Rhine had already begun their pirate raids along the coasts to the westwards.[318] Each tribe derived its name from its peculiar national weapon (the Franks from their throwing-axe (_franca_),[319] the Saxons from the _saexes_, long murderous knives, snouted like a Norwegian knife of the present day, which they used with such deadly effect);[320] and their appearance constituted a new and fearful danger to the Roman Empire. Never, since the Mediterranean pirates were crushed by Pompey (B.C. 66) had it been exposed to attacks by sea. A special effort was needed to meet this new situation, and we find, accordingly, a new officer now added to the Imperial muster,--the Count of the Saxon Shore. His jurisdiction extended over the northern coast of Gaul and the southern and eastern shores of Britain, the head-quarters of his fleet being at Boulogne.

A. 3.--The first man to be placed in this position was Carausius,[321] a Frisian adventurer of low birth, but great military reputation, to which unfortunately he proved unequal. When his command was not followed by the looked-for putting-down of the pirate raiders, he was suspected, probably with truth, of a secret understanding with them. The Government accordingly sent down orders for his execution, to which he replied (A.D. 286) by open rebellion, took the pirate fleets into his pay, and having thus got the undisputed command of the sea, succeeded in maintaining himself as Emperor in Britain for the rest of his life.

A. 4.--His reign and that of his successor (and murderer) Allectus are marked by the last and most extraordinary development of Romano-British coinage. Since the time of Caracalla no coins which can be definitely proved to deserve this name are found; but now, in less than ten years, our mints struck no fewer than five hundred several issues, all of different types. Nearly all are of bronze, with the radiated head of the Emperor on the obverse, and on the reverse devices of every imaginable kind. The British Lion once more figures, as in the days of Cymbeline; and we have also the Roman Wolf, the Sea-horse, the Cow (as a symbol of Prosperity), Plenty, Peace, Victory, Prudence, Health, Safety, Might, Good Luck, Glory, all symbolized in various ways. But the favourite type of all is the British warship; for now Britannia, for the first time, ruled the waves, and was, indeed, so entirely Mistress of the Sea that her fleet appeared even in Mediterranean waters.[322] The vessels figured are invariably not Saxon "keels," but classical galleys, with their rams and outboard rowing galleries, and are always represented as cleared for action (when the great mainsail and its yard were left on shore).

A. 5.--The usurpation of Carausius, "the pirate," as the Imperial panegyrists called him,[323] brought Diocletian's great reform of the Roman administration within the scope of practical politics in Britain. The old system of Provinces, some Imperial, some Senatorial, with each Pro-praetor or Pro-consul responsible only and immediately to the central government at Rome, had obviously become outgrown. And the Provinces themselves were much too large. Diocletian accordingly began by dividing the Empire into four "Prefectures," two in the east and two in the west. Each pair was to be under one of the co-Augusti, who again was to entrust one of his Prefectures to the "Caesar"[324] or heir-apparent of his choice. Thus Diocletian held the East, while Galerius, his "Caesar," took the Prefecture of Illyricum. His colleague Maximian, as Augustus of the West, ruled in Italy; and the remaining Prefecture, that of "the Gauls," fell to the Western Caesar, Constantius Chlorus. Each Prefecture, again, was divided into "Dioceses" (that of Constantius containing those of Britain, Gaul, Spain, and Mauretania), each under a "Vicar," and comprising a certain number of "Provinces" (that of Britain having four). Thus a regular hierarchy with rank above rank of responsibility was established, and so firmly that Diocletian's system lasted (so far as provincial government was concerned) till the very latest days of the Roman dominion.

A. 6.--When Constantius thus became Caesar of the West, his first task was to restore Britain to the Imperial system. He was already, it seems, connected with the island, and had married a British lady named Helen.[325] Their son Constantine, a youth of special promise (according to the panegyrists), had been born at York, about A.D. 274, and now appeared on the scene to aid his father's operations with supernatural speed, "_quasi divino quodam curriculo_."[326] Extraordinary celerity, indeed, marked all these operations. Allectus was on his guard, with one squadron at Boulogne to sweep the coast of Gaul, and another cruising in the Channel. By a sudden dash Constantius [in A.D. 296] seized the mouth of Boulogne harbour, threw a boom across it, "_defixis in aditu trabibus_," and effectually barred the pirates from access to the sea.[327] Meanwhile the fleet which he had been building simultaneously in various Gallic ports was able to rendezvous undisturbed at Havre.

A. 7.--His men were no expert mariners like their adversaries; and, for this very reason, were ready, with their Caesar at their head, to put to sea in threatening weather, which made their better-skilled pilots hesitate. "What can we fear?" was the cry, "Caesar is with us." Dropping down the Seine with the tide on a wild and rainy morning, they set sail with a cross wind, probably from the north-east, a rare thing with ancient ships. As they neared the British coast the breeze sank to a dead calm, with a heavy mist lying on the waveless sea, in which the fleet found it impossible to keep together. One division, with Constantius himself on board, made their land-fall somewhere in the west, perhaps at Exeter, the other far to the east, possibly at Richborough.

A. 8.--But the wonderful luck which attended Constantius, and on which his panegyrists specially dwell, made all turn out for the best. The mist enabled both his divisions to escape the notice of the British fleet, which was lying off the Isle of Wight on the watch for him; and the unexpected landing at two such distant points utterly demoralized the usurper. Of the large force which had been mustered for land defence, only the Frankish auxiliaries could be got together in time to meet Constantius--who, having burnt his ships (for his only hope now lay in victory), was marching, with his wonted speed, straight on London. One battle,[328] in which scarcely a single Roman fell on the British side, was enough; the corpse of Allectus [_ipse vexillarius latrocinii_] was found, stripped of the Imperial insignia, amongst the heaps of slain barbarians, and the routed Franks fled to London. Here, while they were engaged in sacking the city before evacuating it, they were set upon by the eastern division of the Roman army (under Asclepiodotus the Praetorian Prefect)[329] and slaughtered almost to a man. The rescued metropolis eagerly welcomed its deliverers, and the example was followed by the rest of Britain; the more readily that the few surviving Franks were distributed throughout the land to perish in the provincial amphitheatres.

A. 9.--The Diocletian system was now introduced; and, instead of Hadrian's old divisions of Upper and Lower Britain, the island south of his Wall was distributed into four Provinces, "Britannia Prima," "Britannia Secunda," "Maxima Caesariensis," and "Flavia Caesariensis." That the Thames, the Severn, and the Humber formed the frontier lines between these new divisions is probable. But their identification, in the current maps of Roman Britain, with the later Wessex, Wales, Northumbria, and Mercia (with East Anglia), respectively, is purely conjectural.[330] All that we know is that when the district between Hadrian's Wall and Agricola's Rampart was reconquered in 369, it was made a fifth British Province under the name Valentia. The Governor of each Province exercised his functions under the "Vicar" of the "Diocese," an official of "Respectable" rank--the second in precedence of the Diocletian hierarchy (exclusive of the Imperial Family).

A. 10.--With the Diocletian administration necessarily came the Diocletian Persecution--an essential feature of the situation. There is no reason to imagine that the great reforming Emperor had, like his colleague Maximian, any personal hatred for Christianity. But Christianity was not among the _religiones licitae_ of the Empire. Over and over again it had been pronounced by Imperial Rescript unlawful. This being so, Diocletian saw in its toleration merely one of those corruptions of lax government which it was his special mission to sweep away, and proceeded to deal with it as with any other abuse,--to be put down with whole-hearted vigour and rigour.

A. 11.--The Faith had by this time everywhere become so widespread that the good-will of its professors was a political power to be reckoned with. Few of the passing Pretenders of the Era of Confusion had dared to despise it, some had even courted it; and thus throughout the Empire the Christian hierarchy had been established, and Christian churches been built everywhere; while Christians swarmed in every department of the Imperial service,--their neglect of the official worship winked at, while they, in turn, were not vigorous in rebuking the idolatry of their heathen fellow-servants. Now all was changed. The sacred edifices were thrown down, or (as in the famous case of St. Clement's at Rome) made over for heathen worship, the sacred books and vessels destroyed, and every citizen, however humble, had to produce a _libellus_,[331] or magisterial certificate, testifying that he had formally done homage to the Gods of the State, by burning incense at their shrines, by pouring libations in their name, and by partaking of the victims sacrificed upon their altars. Torture and death were the lot of all recusants; and to the noble army of martyrs who now sealed their testimony with their blood Britain is said (by Gildas) to have contributed a contingent of no fewer than seventeen thousand, headed by St. Alban at Verulam.

A. 12.--So thorough-going a persecution the Church had never known. But it came too late for Diocletian's purpose; and it was probably the latent consciousness of his failure that impelled him, in 305, to resign the purple and retire to his cabbage-garden at Dyrrhachium. Maximian found himself unwillingly obliged to retire likewise; and the two Caesars, Galerius and Constantius, became, by the operation of the new constitution, _ipso facto_ Augusti.

A. 13.--But already the mutual jealousy and distrust in which that constitution was so soon to perish began to manifest themselves. Galerius, though properly only Emperor of the East, seized on Rome, and with it on the person of the young Constantine, whom he hoped to keep as hostage for his father's submission. The youth, however, contrived to flee, and post down to join Constantius in Gaul, slaughtering every stud of relays along the entire road to delay his pursuers. Both father and son at once sailed for Britain, where the former shortly died, like Severus, at York. With their arrival the persecution promptly ceased;[332] for Helena, at least, was an ardent Christian, and her husband well-affected to the Faith. Yet, on his death, he was, like his predecessors, proclaimed _Divus_; the last formal bestowal of that title being thus, like the first,[333] specially connected with Britain. Constantius was buried, according to Nennius,[334] at Segontium, wherever that may have been; and Constantine, though not yet even a Caesar, was at once proclaimed by the soldiers (at his native York) Augustus in his father's room.

A. 14.--This was the signal for a whole outburst of similar proclamations all over the Roman world, Licinius, Constantine's brother-in-law, declared himself Emperor at Carnutum, Maxentius, son of Maximian and son-in-law of Galerius, in Rome, Severus in the Illyrian provinces, and Maximin (who had been a Caesar) in Syria. Galerius still reigned, and even Maximian revoked his resignation and appeared once more as Augustus. But one by one this medley of Pretenders swept each other away, and the survival of the fittest was exemplified by the final victory of Constantine over them all. For a few years he bided his time, and then, at the head of the British army, marched on Rome. Clear-sighted enough to perceive that events were irresistibly tending to the triumph of Christianity, he declared himself the champion of the Faith; and it was not under the Roman Eagle, but the Banner of Christ,[335] that his soldiers fought and won. Coins of his found in Britain, bearing the Sacred Monogram which led his men to the crowning victory of 312 at the Milvian Bridge (the intertwined letters [Greek: Chi] and [Greek: Rho] between [Greek: Alpha] and [Greek: Omega], the whole forming the word [Greek: ARChÔ], "I reign"), with the motto _Hoc Signo Victor Eris_, testify to the special part taken by our country in the establishment of our Faith as the officially recognized religion of Rome,--that is to say, of the whole civilized world. And henceforward, as long as Britain remained Roman at all, it was a monarch of British connection who occupied the Imperial throne. The dynasties of Constantius, Valentinian, and Theodosius, who between them (with the brief interlude of the reign of Julian) fill the next 150 years (300-450), were all markedly associated with our island. So, indeed, was Julian also.

SECTION B.

Spread of Gospel--Arianism--Britain orthodox--Last Imperial visit--Heathen temples stripped--British Emperors--Magnentius--Gratian--Julian--British corn-trade--First inroad of Picts and Scots--Valentinian--Saxon raids--Campaign of Theodosius--Re-conquest of Valentia.

B. 1.--For a whole generation after the triumph of Constantine tranquillity reigned in Britain. The ruined Christian churches were everywhere restored, and new ones built; and in Britain, as elsewhere, the Gospel spread rapidly and widely--the more so that the Church here was but little troubled[336] by the desperate struggle with Arianism which was convulsing the East. Britain, as Athanasius tells us, gave an assenting vote to the decisions of Nicaea [[Greek: sumpsêphos etunchane]], and British Bishops actually sat in the Councils of Arles (314) and of Ariminum (360).

B. 2.--The old heathen worship still continued side by side with the new Faith; but signs soon appeared that the Church would tolerate no such rivalry when once her power was equal to its suppression. Julius Firmicus (who wrote against "Profane Religions" in 343) implores the sons of Constantine to continue their good work of stripping the temples and melting down the images;--in special connection with a visit paid by them that year to Britain[337] (our last Imperial visit), when they had actually been permitted to cross the Channel in winter-time; an irrefragable proof of Heaven's approval of their iconoclasm. It is highly probable that they pursued here also a course at once so pious and so profitable, and that the fanes of the ancient deities but lingered on in poverty and neglect till finally suppressed by Theodosius (A.D. 390).

B. 3.--And now Britain resumed her _rôle_ of Emperor-maker.[338] After the death of Constans, (A.D. 350), Magnentius, an officer in the Gallic army of British birth, set up as Augustus, and was supported by Gratian, the leader of the Army of Britain, and by his son Valentinian. Magnentius himself had his capital at Treves, and for three years reigned over the whole Prefecture of the Gauls. He professed a special zeal for orthodoxy, and was the first to introduce burning, as the appropriate punishment for heresy, into the penal code of Christendom. Meanwhile his colleague Decentius advanced against Constantius, and was defeated, at Nursa on the Drave, with such awful slaughter that the old Roman Legions never recovered from the shock. Henceforward the name signifies a more or less numerous body, more or less promiscuously armed, such as we find so many of in the 'Notitia.' Magnentius, in turn, was slain (A.D. 353), and the supreme command in Britain passed to the new Caesar of the West, Julian "the Apostate."

B. 4.--Under him we first find our island mentioned as one of the great corn-growing districts of the Empire, on which Gaul was able to draw to a very large extent for the supply of her garrisons. No fewer than eight hundred wheat-ships sailed from our shores on this errand; a number which shows how large an area of the island must have been brought under cultivation, and how much the country had prospered during the sixty years of unbroken internal peace which had followed on the suppression of Allectus.

B. 5.--That peace was now to be broken up. The northern tribes had by this recovered from the awful chastisement inflicted upon them by Severus,[339] and, after an interval of 150 years, once more (A.D. 362) appeared south of Hadrian's Wall. Whether as yet they _burst through_ it is uncertain; for now we find a new confederacy of barbarians. It is no longer that of Caledonians and Meatae, but of Picts and Scots. And these last were seafarers. Their home was not in Britain at all, but in the north of Ireland. In their "skiffs"[340] they were able to turn the flank of the Roman defences, and may well have thus introduced their allies from beyond Solway also. Anyhow, penetrate the united hordes did into the quiet cornfields of Roman Britain, repeating their raids ever more frequently and extending them ever more widely, till their spearmen were cut [Errata: to] pieces in 450 at Stamford by the swords of the newly-arrived English.[341]

B. 6.--For the moment they were driven back without much difficulty, by Lupicinus, Julian's Legate (the first Legate we hear of in Britain since Lollius Urbicus), who, when the death of Constantius II. (in 361) had extinguished that royal line, aided his master to become "_Dominus totius orbis_"--as he is called in an inscription[342] describing his triumphant campaigns "_ex oceano Britannico_." And after "the victory of the Galilaean" (363) had ended Julian's brief and futile attempt to restore the Higher Paganism (to which several British inscriptions testify),[343] it was again to an Emperor from Britain that there fell the Lordship of the World--Valentinian, son of Gratian, whose dynasty lasted out the remaining century of Romano-British history.

B. 7.--His reign was marked in our land by a life-and-death struggle with the inrushing barbarians. The Picts and Scots were now joined by yet another tribe, the cannibal[344] Attacotti[345] of Valentia, and their invasions were facilitated by the simultaneous raids of the Saxon pirates (with whom they may perhaps have been actually in concert) along the coast. The whole land had been wasted, and more than one Roman general defeated, when Theodosius, father of the Great Emperor, was sent, in 368, to the rescue. Crossing from Boulogne to Richborough in a lucky calm,[346] and fixing his head-quarters at London, or Augusta, as it was now called [_Londinium vetus oppidum, quod Augustam posteritas apellavit_], he first, by a skilful combination of flying columns, cut to pieces the scattered hordes of the savages as they were making off with their booty, and finally not only drove them back beyond the Wall, which he repaired and re-garrisoned,[347] but actually recovered the district right up to Agricola's rampart, which had been barbarian soil ever since the days of Severus.[348] It was now (369) formed into a fifth British province, and named Valentia in honour of Valens, the brother and colleague of the Emperor.

B. 8.--The Twentieth Legion, whose head-quarters had so long been at Chester, seems to have been moved to guard this new province. Forty years later Claudian speaks of it as holding the furthest outposts in Britain, in his well-known description of the dying Pict:

"Venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis, Quae Scoto dat frena truci, ferroque notatas Perlegit exsangues Picto moriente figuras."

["From Britain's bound the outpost legion came, Which curbs the savage Scot, and fading sees The steel-wrought figures on the dying Pict."]

The same poet makes Theodosius fight and conquer even in the Orkneys and in Ireland;

"--maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades; incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thule; Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne."[349]

["With Saxon slaughter flowed the Orkney strand, With Pictish blood cold Thule warmer grew; And icy Erin wept her Scotchmen slain."]

The relief, however, was but momentary. Five years later (374) another great Saxon raid is recorded; yet eight years more and the Picts and Scots have again to be driven from the land; and in the next decade their attacks became incessant.

SECTION C.

Roman evacuation of Britain begun--Maximus--Settlement of Brittany--Stilicho restores the Wall--Radagaisus invades Italy--Twentieth Legion leaves Britain--Britain in the 'Notitia'--Final effort of British Army--The last Constantine--Last Imperial Rescript to Britain--Sack of Rome by Alaric--Collapse of Roman rule in Britain.

C. 1.--By this time the evacuation of Britain by the Roman soldiery had fairly begun. Maximus, the last victor over the Scots, the "Pirate of Richborough," as Ausonius calls him, set up as Emperor (A.D. 383); and the Army of Britain again marched on Rome, and again, as under Constantine, brought its leader in triumph to the Capitol (A.D. 387). But this time it did not return. When Maximus was defeated and slain (A.D. 388) at Aquileia by the Imperial brothers-in-law Valentinian II. and Theodosius the Great[350] (sons of the so-named leaders connected with Britain), his soldiers, as they retreated homewards, straggled on the march; settling, amid the general confusion, here and there, mostly in Armorica, which now first began to be called Brittany.[351] This tale rests only on the authority of Nennius, but it is far from improbable, especially as his sequel--that a fresh legion dispatched to Britain by Stilicho (in 396) once more repelled the Picts and Scots, and re-secured the Wall--is confirmed by Claudian, who makes Britain (in a sea-coloured cloak and bearskin head-gear) hail Stilicho as her deliverer:

Inde Caledonio velata Britannia monstro, Ferro picta genas, cujus vestigia verrit Coerulus, Oceanique aestum mentitur, amictus: "Me quoque vicinis percuntem gentibus," inquit, "Munivit Stilichon, totam quum Scotus Iernen Movit, et infesto spumavit remige Tethys. Illius effectum curis, ne tela timerem Scotica, ne Pictum tremerem, ne litore toto Prospicerem dubiis venturum Saxona ventis."[352]

[Then next, with Caledonian bearskin cowled, Her cheek steel-tinctured, and her trailing robe Of green-shot blue, like her own Ocean's tide, Britannia spake: "Me too," she cried, "in act To perish 'mid the shock of neighbouring hordes, Did Stilicho defend, when the wild Scot All Erin raised against me, and the wave Foamed 'neath the stroke of many a foeman's oar. So wrought his pains that now I fear no more Those Scottish darts, nor tremble at the Pict, Nor mark, where'er to sea mine eyes I turn, The Saxon coming on each shifting wind."]

C. 2.--Which legion it was which Stilicho sent to Britain is much more questionable. The Roman legions were seldom moved from province to province, and it is perhaps more probable that he filled up the three quartered in the island to something like their proper strength. But a crisis was now at hand which broke down all ordinary rules. Rome was threatened with such a danger as she had not known since Marius, five hundred years before, had destroyed the Cimbri and Teutones (B.C. 101). A like horde of Teutonic invaders, nearly half a million strong, came pouring over the Alps, under "Radagaisus the Goth," as contemporary historians call him, though his claim, to Gothic lineage is not undisputed. And these were not, like Alaric and his Visigoths, who were to reap the fruits of this effort, semi-civilized Christians, but heathen savages of the most ferocious type. Every nerve had to be strained to crush them; and Stilicho did crush them. But it was at a fearful cost. Every Roman soldier within reach had to be swept to the rescue, and thus the Rhine frontier was left defenceless against the barbarian hordes pressing upon it. Vandals, Sueves, Alans, Franks, Burgundians, rushed tumultuously over the peaceful and fertile fields of Gaul, never to be driven forth again.

C. 3.--Of the three British legions one only seems to have been thus withdrawn,--the Twentieth, whose head-quarters had been so long at Chester, and whose more recent duty had been to garrison the outlying province of Valentia, which may now perhaps have been again abandoned. It seems to have been actually on the march towards Italy[353] when there was drawn up that wonderful document which gives us our last and completest glimpse of Roman Britain--the _Notitia Dignitatum Utriusque Imperii_.

C. 4.--This invaluable work sets forth in detail the whole machinery of the Imperial Government, its official hierarchy, both civil and military, in every land, and a summary of the forces under the authority of each commander. A reference in Claudian would seem to show that it was compiled by the industry of Celerinus, the _Primicerius Notariorum_ or Head Clerk of the Treasury. The poet tells us how this indefatigable statistician--

"Cunctorum tabulas assignat honorum, Regnorum tractat numeros, constringit in unum Sparsas Imperii vires, cuneosque recenset Dispositos; quae Sarmaticis custodia ripis, Quae saevis objecta Getis, quae Saxona frenat Vel Scotum legio; quantae cinxere cohortes Oceanum, quanto pacatur milite Rhenus."[354]

["Each rank, each office in his lists he shows, Tells every subject realm, together draws The Empire's scattered force, recounts the hosts In order meet;--which Legion is on guard By Danube's banks, which fronts the savage Goth, Which curbs the Saxon, which the Scot; what bands Begird the Ocean, what keep watch on Rhine."]

To us the 'Notitia' is only known by the 16th-century copies of a 10th-century MS. which has now disappeared.[355] But these were made with exceptional care, and are as nearly as may be facsimiles of the original, even preserving its illuminated illustrations, including the distinctive insignia of every corps in the Roman Army.

C. 5.--The number of these corps had, we find, grown erormously since the days of Hadrian, when, as Dion Cassius tells us, there were 19 "Civic Legions" (of which three were quartered in Britain). No fewer than 132 are now enumerated, together with 108 auxiliary bodies. But we may be sure that each of these "legions" was not the complete Army Corps of old,[356] though possibly the 25 of the First Class, the _Legiones Palatinae_, may have kept something of their ancient effectiveness. Indeed it is not wholly improbable that these alone represent the old "civil" army; the Second and Third Class "legions," with their extraordinary names ("Comitatenses" and "Pseudo-Comitatenses"), being indeed merely so called by "courtesy," or even "sham courtesy."

C. 6.--In Britain we find the two remaining legions of the old garrison, the Second, now quartered not at Caerleon but at Richborough, under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and the Sixth under the "Duke of the Britains," holding the north (with its head-quarters doubtless, as of yore, at York, though this is not mentioned). Along with each legion are named ten "squads" [_numeri_], which may perhaps represent the ten cohorts into which legions were of old divided. The word cohort seems to have changed its meaning, and now to signify an independent military unit under a "Tribune." Eighteen of these, together with six squadrons [_alae_] of cavalry, each commanded by a "Praefect," form the garrison of the Wall;--a separate organization, though, like the rest of the northern forces, under the Duke of the Britains. The ten squads belonging to the Sixth Legion (each under a Prefect) are distributed in garrison throughout Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Westmoreland. Those of the Second (each commanded by a "Praepositus") are partly under the Count of the Saxon Shore, holding the coast from the Wash to Arundel,[357] partly under the "Count of Britain," who was probably the senior officer in the island[358] and responsible for its defence in general. Besides these bodies of infantry the British Army comprised eighteen cavalry units; three, besides the six on the Wall, being in the north, three on the Saxon Shore, and the remaining six under the immediate command of the Count of Britain, to whose troops no special quarters are assigned. Not a single station is mentioned beyond the Wall, which supports the theory that the withdrawal of the Twentieth Legion had involved the practical abandonment of Valentia.[359]

C. 7.--The two Counts and the Duke were the military leaders of Britain. The chief civil officer was the "respectable" Vicar of the Diocese of Britain, one of the six Vicars under the "illustrious" Pro-consul of Africa. Under him were the Governors of the five Provinces, two of these being "Consulars" of "Right Renowned" rank [_clarissimi_,] the other three "Right Perfect" [_perfectissimi_] "Presidents." The Vicar was assisted by a staff of Civil Servants, nine heads of departments being enumerated. Their names, however, have become so wholly obsolete as to tell us nothing of their respective functions.

C. 8.--Whatever these may have been they did not include the financial administration of the Diocese, the general management of which was in the hands of two officers, the "Accountant of Britain" [_Rationalis Summarum Britanniarum_] and the "Provost of the London Treasury" [_Praepositus thesaurorum Augustensium_].[360] Both these were subordinates of the "Count of the Sacred Largesses" [_Comes Sacrarum Largitionum_], one of the greatest officers of State, corresponding to our First Lord of the Treasury, whose name reminds us that all public expenditure was supposed to be the personal benevolence of His Sacred Majesty the Emperor, and all sources of public revenue his personal property. The Emperor, however, had actually in every province domains of his own, managed by the Count of the Privy Purse [_Comes Rei Privatae_], whose subordinate in Britain was entitled the "Accountant of the Privy Purse for Britain" [_Rationalis Rei Privatae per Britanniam_]. Both these Counts were "Illustrious" [_illustres_]; that is, of the highest order of the Imperial peerage below the "Right Noble" [_nobilissimi_] members of the Imperial Family.

C. 9.--Such and so complete was the system of civil and military government in Roman Britain up to the very point of its sudden and utter collapse. When the 'Notitia' was compiled, neither Celerinus, as he wrote, nor the officials whose functions and ranks he noted, could have dreamt that within ten short years the whole elaborate fabric would, so far as Britain was concerned, be swept away utterly and for ever. Yet so it was.

C. 10.--For what was left of the British Army now made a last effort to save the West for Rome, and once more set up Imperial Pretenders of its own.[361] The first two of these, Marcus and Gratian, were speedily found unequal to the post, and paid the usual penalty of such incompetence; but the third, a private soldier named Constantine, all but succeeded in emulating the triumph of his great namesake. For four years (407-411) he was able to hold not only Britain, but Gaul and Spain also under his sceptre; and the wretched Honorius, the unworthy son and successor of Theodosius, who was cowering amid the marshes of Ravenna, and had murdered his champion Stilicho, was fain to recognize the usurper as a legitimate Augustus. Only by treachery was he put down at last, the traitor being the commander of his British forces, Gerontius. Both names continued for many an age favourites in British nomenclature, and both have been swept into the cycle of Arturian romance, the latter as "Geraint."

C. 11.--Neither Gerontius nor his soldiers ever got back to their old homes in Britain. What became of them we do not know. But Zosimus[362] tells us that Honorius now sent a formal rescript to the British cities abrogating the Lex Julia, which forbade civilians to carry arms, and bidding them look to their own safety. For now the end had really come, and the Eternal City itself had been sacked by barbarian hands. Never before and never since does history record a sacked city so mildly treated by the conquerors. Heretics as the Visi-goths were, they never forgot that the vanquished Catholics were their fellow-Christians, and, barbarians as they were, they left an example of mercy in victory which puts to the blush much more recent Christian and civilized warfare.

C. 12.--But, for all that, the moral effect of Alaric's capture of Rome was portentous, and shook the very foundations of civilization throughout the world. To Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, the tidings came like the shock of an earthquake. Augustine, as he penned his 'De Civitate Dei,' felt the old world ended indeed, and the Kingdom of Heaven indeed at hand. And in Britain the whole elaborate system of Imperial civil and military government seems to have crumbled to the ground almost at once. It is noticeable that the rescript of Honorius is addressed simply to "the cities" of Britain, the local municipal officers of each several place. No higher authority remained. The Vicar of Britain, with his staff, the Count and Duke of the Britains with their soldiery, the Count of the Saxon Shore with his coastguard,--all were gone. It is possible that, as the deserted provincials learnt to combine for defence, the Dictators they chose from time to time to lead the national forces may have derived some of their authority from the remembrance of these old dignities. "The dragon of the great Pendragonship,"[363] the tufa of Caswallon (633), and the purple of Cunedda[364] may well have been derived (as Professor Rhys suggests) from this source. But practically the history of Roman Britain ends with a crash at the Fall of Rome.

SECTION D.

Beginning of English Conquest--Vortigern--Jutes in Thanet--Battle of Stamford--Massacre of Britons--Valentinian III.--Latest Roman coin found in Britain--Progress of Conquest--The Cymry--Survival of Romano-British titles--Arturian Romances--Procopius--Belisarius--Roman claims revived by Charlemagne--The British Empire.

D. 1.--Little remains to be told, and that little rests upon no contemporary authority known to us. In Gildas, the nearest, writing in the next century, we find little more than a monotonous threnody over the awful visitation of the English Conquest, the wholesale and utter destruction of cities, the desecration of churches, the massacre of clergy and people. Nennius (as, for the sake of convenience, modern writers mostly agree to call the unknown author of the 'Historia Britonum') gives us legends of British incompetence and Saxon treachery which doubtless represent the substantial features of the break-up, and preserve, quite possibly, even some of the details. Bede and the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' assign actual dates to the various events, but we have no means of testing their accuracy.

D. 2.--Broadly we know that the unhappy civilians, who were not only without military experience, but had up to this moment been actually forbidden to carry arms, naturally proved unable to face the ferocious enemies who swarmed in upon them. They could neither hold the Wall against the Picts nor the coast against the Saxons. It may well be true that they chose a _Dux Britannorum_,[365] and that his name may have been something like Vortigern, and that he (when a final appeal for Roman aid proved vain)[366] may have taken into his pay (as Carausius did) the crews of certain pirate "keels" [_chiulae_],[367] and settled them in Thanet. The very names of their English captains, "Hengist and Horsa," may not be so mythical as critics commonly assume.[368] And the tale of the victory at Stamford, when the spears of the Scottish invaders were cut to pieces by the swords of the English mercenaries,[369] has a very true ring about it. So has also the sequel, which tells how, when the inevitable quarrel arose between employers and employed, the Saxon leader gave the signal for the fray by suddenly shouting to his men, _Nimed eure saxes_[370] (_i.e._ "Draw your knives!"), and massacred the hapless Britons of Kent almost without resistance.

D. 3.--The date of this first English settlement is doubtful. Bede fixes it as 449, which agrees with the order of events in Gildas, and with the notice in Nennius that it was forty years after the end of Roman rule in Britain [_transacto Romanorum in Britannia imperio_]. But Nennius also declares that this was in the fourth year of Vortigern, and that his accession coincided with that of the nephew and successor of Honorius, Valentinian III., son of Galla Placidia, which would bring in the Saxons 428. It may perhaps be some very slight confirmation of the later date, that Valentinian is the last Emperor whose coins have been found in Britain.[371]

D. 4.--Anyhow, the arrival of the successive swarms of Anglo-Saxons from the mouth of the Elbe, and their hard-won conquest of Eastern Britain during the 5th century, is certain. The western half of the island, from Clydesdale southwards, resisted much longer, and, in spite of its long and straggling frontier, held together for more than a century. Not till the decisive victory of the Northumbrians at Chester (A.D. 607), and that of the West Saxons at Beandune (A.D. 614) was this Cymrian federation finally broken into three fragments, each destined shortly to disintegrate into an ever-shifting medley of petty principalities. Yet in each the ideal of national and racial unity embodied in the word Cymry[372] long survived; and titles borne to this day by our Royal House, "Duke of Cornwall," "Prince of Wales," "Duke of Albany," are the far-off echoes, lingering in each, of the Roman "Comes Britanniae" and "Dux Britanniarum." The three feathers of the Principality may in like manner be traced to the _tufa_, or plume, borne before the supreme authority amongst the Romans of old, as the like are borne before the Supreme Head of the Roman Church to this day. And age after age the Cymric harpers sang of the days when British armies had marched in triumph to Rome, and the Empire had been won by British princes, till the exploits of their mystical "Arthur"[373] became the nucleus of a whole cycle of mediaeval romance, and even, for a while, a real force in practical politics.[374]

D. 5.--And as the Britons never quite forgot their claims on the Empire, so the Empire never quite forgot its claims on Britain. How entirely the island was cut off from Rome we can best appreciate by the references to it in Procopius. This learned author, writing under Justinian, scarcely 150 years since the day when the land was fully Roman, conceives of Britannia and Brittia as two widely distant islands--the one off the coast of Spain, the other off the mouth of the Rhine.[375] The latter is shared between the Angili, Phrissones,[376] and Britons, and is divided _from North to South_[377] by a mighty Wall, beyond which no mortal man can breathe. Hither are ferried over from Gaul by night the souls of the departed;[378] the fishermen, whom a mysterious voice summons to the work, seeing no one, but perceiving their barks to be heavily sunk in the water, yet accomplishing the voyage with supernatural celerity.

D. 6.--About the same date Belisarius offered to the Goths,[379] in exchange for their claim to Sicily, which his victories had already rendered practically nugatory, the Roman claims to Britain, "a much larger island," which were equally outside the scope of practical politics for the moment, but might at any favourable opportunity be once more brought forward. And, when the Western Empire was revived under Charlemagne, they were in fact brought forward, and actually submitted to by half the island. The Celtic princes of Scotland, the Anglians of Northumbria, and the Jutes of Kent alike owned the new Caesar as their Suzerain. And the claim was only abrogated by the triumph of the counter-claim first made by Egbert, emphasized by Edward the Elder, and repeated again and again by our monarchs their descendants, that the British Crown owes no allegiance to any potentate on earth, being itself not only Royal, but in the fullest sense Imperial.[380]

SECTION E.

Survivals of Romano-British civilization--Romano-British Church--Legends of its origin--St. Paul--St. Peter--Joseph of Arimathaea--Glastonbury--Historical notices--Claudia and Pudens--Pomponia--Church of St. Pudentiana--Patristic references to Britain--Tertullian--Origen--Legend of Lucius--Native Christianity--British Bishops at Councils--Testimony of Chrysostom and Jerome.

E. 1.--Few questions have been more keenly debated than the extent to which Roman civilization in Britain survived the English Conquest. On the one hand we have such high authorities as Professor Freeman assuring us that our forefathers swept it away as ruthlessly and as thoroughly as the Saracens in Africa; on the other, those who consider that little more disturbance was wrought than by the Danish invasions. The truth probably lies between the two, but much nearer to the former than the latter. The substitution of an English for the Roman name of almost every Roman site in the country[381] could scarcely have taken place had there been anything like continuity in their inhabitants. Even the Roman roads, as we have seen,[382] received English designations. We may well believe that most Romano-British towns shared the fate of Anderida (the one recorded instance of destruction),[383] and that the word "chester" was only applied to the Roman _ruins_ by their destroyers.[384] But such places as London, York, and Lincoln may well have lived on through the first generation of mere savage onslaught, after which the English gradually began to tolerate even for themselves a town life.

E. 2.--And though in the country districts the agricultural population were swept away pitilessly to make room for the invaders,[385] till the fens of Ely[386] and the caves of Ribblesdale[387] became the only refuge of the vanquished, yet, undoubtedly, many must have been retained as slaves, especially amongst the women, to leaven the language of the conquerors with many a Latin word, and their ferocity with many a recollection of the gentler Roman past.

E. 3.--And there was one link with that past which not all the massacres and fire-raisings of the Conquest availed to break. The Romano-British populations might be slaughtered, the Romano-British towns destroyed, but the Romano-British Church lived on; the most precious and most abiding legacy bestowed by Rome upon our island.

E. 4.--The origin of that Church has been assigned by tradition to directly Apostolic sources. The often-quoted passage from Theodoret,[388] of St. Paul having "brought help" to "the isles of the sea" [[Greek: tais en to pelagei diakeimenais nêsois]], can scarcely, however, refer to this island. No classical author ever uses the word [Greek: pelagos] of the Oceanic waters; and the epithet [Greek: diakeimenais], coming, as it does, in connection with the Apostle's preaching in Italy and Spain, seems rather to point to the islands between these peninsulas--Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands. But the well-known words of St. Clement of Rome,[389] that St. Paul's missionary journeys extended to "the End of the West" [Greek: to terma tês duseôs], were, as early as the 6th century, held to imply a visit to Britain (for our island was popularly supposed by the ancients to lie west of Spain).[390] The lines of Venantius (A.D. 580) even seem to contain a reference to the tradition that he landed at Portsmouth:

"Transit et Oceanum, vel qua facit insula portum, Quasque Britannus habet terras atque ultima Thule."

["Yea, through the ocean he passed, where the Port is made by an island, And through each British realm, and where the world endeth at Thule."]

E. 5.--The Menology of the Greek Church (6th century) ascribes the organization of the British Church to the visitation, not of St. Paul, but of St. Peter in person.

[Greek: O Petros ... ehis Bretannian paraginetai. Entha dô cheirotribôsas [_sic_] kai polla tôn hakatanomatôn hethnôn eis tôn tou Christou pistin epispasamenos ... kai pollous toi logoi photisas tôs charitos, ekklaesias te sustêsamenos, episkopous te kai presbuterous kai diakonous cheipotonhêsas, dôdekatôi etei tou Kaisaros authis eis Rômên paraginetai.][391]

["Peter ... cometh even unto Britain. Yea, there abode he long, and many of the lawless folk did he draw to the Faith of Christ ... and many did he enlighten with the Word of Grace. Churches, too, did he set up, and ordained bishops and priests and deacons. And in the twelfth year of Caesar[392] came he again unto Rome."]

The 'Acta Sanctorum' also mentions this tradition (filtered through Simeon Metaphrastes), and adds that St. Peter was in Britain during Boadicea's rebellion, when he incurred great danger.

E. 6--The 'Synopsis Apostolorum,' ascribed to Dorotheus (A.D. 180), but really a 6th-century compilation, gives us yet another Apostolic preacher, St. Simon Zelotes. This is probably due to a mere confusion between [Greek: Mabritania] [Mauretania] and [Greek: Bretannia]. But it is impossible to deny that the Princes of the Apostles _may_ both have visited Britain, nor indeed is there anything essentially improbable in their doing so. We know that Britain was an object of special interest at Rome during the period of the Conquest, and it would be quite likely that the idea of simultaneously conquering this new Roman dominion for Christ should suggest itself to the two Apostles so specially connected with the Roman Church.[393]

E. 7.--But while we may _possibly_ accept this legend, it is otherwise with the famous and beautiful story which ascribes the foundation of our earliest church at Glastonbury to the pilgrimage of St. Joseph of Arimathaea, whose staff, while he rested on Weary-all Hill, took root, and became the famous winter thorn, which

"Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord,"[394]

and who, accordingly, set up, hard by, a little church of wattle to be the centre of local Christianity.

E. 8.--Such was the tale which accounted for the fact that this humble edifice developed into the stateliest sanctuary of all Britain. We first find it, in its final shape, in Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150); but already in the 10th century the special sanctity of the shrine was ascribed to a supernatural origin,[395] as a contemporary Life of St. Dunstan assures us; and it is declared, in an undisputed Charter of Edgar, to be "the first church in the Kingdom built by the disciples of Christ." But no earlier reference is known; for the passages cited from Gildas and Melkinus are quite untrustworthy. So striking a phenomenon as the winter thorn would be certain to become an object of heathen devotion;[396] and, as usual, the early preachers would Christianize the local cult, as they Christianized the Druidical figment of a Holy Cup (perhaps also local in its origin), into the sublime mysticism of the Sangreal legend, connected likewise with Joseph of Arimathaea.[397]

E. 9.--That the original church of Glaston was really of wattle is more than probable, for the remains of British buildings thus constructed have been found abundantly in the neighbouring peat. The Arimathaean theory of its consecration became so generally accepted that at the Council of Constance (1419) precedence was actually accorded to our Bishops as representing the senior Church of Christendom. But the oldest variant of the legend says nothing about Arimathaea, but speaks only of an undetermined "Joseph" as the leader [_decurio_][398] of twelve missionary comrades who with him settled down at Glastonbury. And this may well be true. Such bands (as we see in the Life of Columba) were the regular system in Celtic mission work, and survived in that of the Preaching Friars:

"For thirteen is a Covent, as I guess."[399]

E. 10.--And though such high authorities as Mr. Haddan have come to the conclusion that Christianity in Britain was confined to a small minority even amongst the Roman inhabitants of the island, and almost vanished with them, yet the catena of references to British converts can scarcely be thus set aside. They begin in Apostolic times and in special connection with St. Paul. Martial tells us of a British princess named Claudia Rufina[400] (very probably the daughter of that Claudius Cogidubnus whom we meet in Tacitus as at once a British King and an Imperial Legate),[2] whose beauty and wit made no little sensation in Rome; whither she had doubtless been sent at once for education and as a hostage for her father's fidelity. And one of the most beautiful of his Epigrams speaks of the marriage of this foreigner to a Roman of high family named Pudens, belonging to the Gens Aemilia (of which the Pauline family formed a part):

"Claudia, Rufe, meo nubet peregrina Pudenti, Macte esto taedis, O Hymenaee, suis. Diligat illa senem quondam; sed et ipsa marito, Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur anus."[401]

[To RUFUS. Claudia, from far-off climes, my Pudens weds: With choicest bliss, O Hymen, crown their heads! May she still love her spouse when gray and old, He in her age unfaded charms behold.]

It may have been in consequence of this marriage that Pudens joined with Claudius Cogidubnus in setting up the Imperial Temple at Chichester.[402] And the fact that Claudia was an adopted member of the Rufine family shows that she was connected with the Gens Pomponia to which this family belonged.

E. 11.--Now Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, had married a Pomponia, who in A.D. 57 was accused of practising an illicit religion, and, though pronounced guiltless by her husband (to whose domestic tribunal she was left, as Roman Law permitted), passed the rest of her life in retirement.[403] When we read of an illicit religion in connection with Britain, our first thought is, naturally, that Druidism is intended.[404] But there are strong reasons for supposing that Pomponia was actually a Christian. The names of her family are found in one of the earliest Christian catacombs in Rome, that of Calixtus; and that Christianity had its converts in very high quarters we know from the case of Clemens and Domitilla, closely related to the Imperial throne.

E. 12.--Turning next to St. Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, we find, in close connection, the names of Pudens and Claudia (along with that of the future Pope Linus) amongst the salutations from Roman Christians. And recent excavations have established the fact that the house of Pudens was used for Christian worship at this date, and is now represented by the church known as St. Pudentiana.[405] That this should have been so proves that this Pudens was no slave going under his master's name (as was sometimes done), but a man of good position in Rome. Short of actual proof it would be hard to imagine a series of evidences more morally convincing that the Pudens and Claudia of Martial are the Pudens and Claudia of St. Paul, and that they, as well as Pomponia, were Christians. Whether, then, St. Paul did or did not actually visit Britain, the earliest British Christianity is, at least, closely connected with his name.

E. 13.--Neither legendary nor historical sources tell us of any further development of British Christianity till the latter days of the 2nd century. Then, however, it had become sufficiently widespread to furnish a common-place for ecclesiastical declamation on the all-conquering influence of the Gospel. Both Tertullian and Origen[406] thus use it. The former numbers in his catalogue of believing countries even the districts of Britain beyond the Roman pale, _Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita_[407]. And in this lies the interest of his reference, as pointing to the native rather than the Roman element being the predominant factor in the British Church. For just at this period comes in the legend preserved by Bede,[408] that a mission was sent to Britain by Pope Eleutherius[409] in response to an appeal from "Lucius Britanniae Rex." The story, which Bede probably got from the 'Catalogus Pontificum,'[410] may be apocryphal; but it would never have been invented had British Christianity been found merely or mainly in the Roman veneer of the population. Modern criticism finds in it this kernel of truth, that the persecution which gave the Gallican Church the martyrs of Lyons, also sent her scattered refugees as missionaries into the less dangerous regions of Britain;--those remoter parts, in especial, where even the long arm of the Imperial Government could not reach them.

E. 14.--The Picts, however, as a nation, remained savage heathens even to the 7th century, and the bulk of our Christian population must have been within the Roman pale; but little vexed, it would seem, by persecution, till it came into conflict with the thorough-going Imperialism of Diocletian.[411] Its martyrs were then numbered, according to Gildas, by thousands, according to Bede by hundreds; and their chief, St. Alban, at least, is a fairly established historical entity.[412] Nor is there any reason to doubt that after Constantine South Britain was as fully Christian as any country in Europe. In the earliest days of his reign (A.D. 314) we find three bishops,[413] together with a priest and a deacon, representing[414] the British Church at the Council of Arles (which, amongst other things, condemned the marriage of the "innocent divorcee"[415]). And the same number figure in the Council of Ariminum (360), as the only prelates (out of the 400) who deigned to accept from the Emperor the expenses of their journey and attendance.

E. 15.--This Council was called by Constantius II. in the semi-Arian interest, and not allowed to break up till after repudiating the Nicene formula. But the lapse was only for a moment. Before the decade was out Athanasius could write of Britain as notoriously orthodox,[416] and before the century closes we have frequent references to our island as a fully Christian and Catholic land. Chrysostom speaks of its churches and its altars and "the power of the Word" in its pulpits,[417] of its diligent study of Scripture and Catholic doctrine,[418] of its acceptance of Catholic discipline,[419] of its use of Catholic formulae: "Whithersoever thou goest," he says, "throughout the whole world, be it to India, to Africa, or to Britain, thou wilt find _In the beginning was the Word_."[420] Jerome, in turn, tells of British pilgrimages to Jerusalem[421] and to Rome;[422] and, in his famous passage on the world-wide Communion of the Roman See, mentions Britain by name: "Nec altera Romanae Urbis Ecclesia, altera totius orbis existimanda est. Et Galliae, et Britanniae, et Africa, et Persis, et Oriens, et Indio, et omnes barbarae nationes, unum Christum adorant, unam observant regulam veritatis."[423]

["Neither is the Church of the City of Rome to be held one, and that of the whole world another. Both Gaul and Britain and Africa and Persia and the East and India, and all the barbarian nations, adore one Christ, observe one Rule of Truth."]

SECTION F.

British Missionaries--Ninias--Patrick--Beatus--Heresiarchs--Pelagius Fastidius--Pelagianism stamped out by Germanus--The Alleluia Battle--Romano-British churches--Why so seldom found--Conclusion.

F. 1.--The fruits of all this vigorous Christian life soon showed themselves in the Church of Britain by the evolution of noteworthy individual Christians. First in order comes Ninias, the Apostle of the Southern Picts, commissioned to the work, after years of training at Rome, by Pope Siricius (A.D. 394), and fired by the example of St. Martin, the great prelate of Gaul. To this saint (or, to speak more exactly, under his invocation) Ninias, on hearing of his death in A.D. 400, dedicated his newly-built church at Whithern[424] in Galloway, the earliest recorded example of this kind of dedication in Britain.[425] Galloway may have been the native home of Ninias, and was certainly the head-quarters of his ministry.

F. 2.--The work of Ninias amongst the Picts was followed in the next generation by the more abiding work of St. Patrick amongst the Scots of Ireland. Nay, even the Continent was indebted to British piety; though few British visitors to the Swiss Oberland remember that the Christianity they see around them is due to the zeal of a British Mission. Yet there seems no solid reason for doubting that so it is. Somewhere about the time of St. Patrick, two British priests, Beatus and Justus, entered the district by the Brunig Pass, and set up their first church at Einigen, near Thun. There Justus abode as the settled Missioner of the neighbourhood, while Beatus made his home in the ivy-clad cave above the lake which still bears his name,[426] sailing up and down with the Gospel message, and evangelizing the valleys and uplands now so familiar to his fellow-countrymen--Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Mürren, Kandersteg.

F. 3.--And while the light of the Gospel was thus spreading on every side from our land, Britain was also becoming all too famous as the nurse of error. The British Pelagius,[427] who erred concerning the doctrine of free-will, grew to be a heresiarch of the first order;[428] and his follower Fastidius, or Faustus, the saintly Abbot of Lerins in the Hyères, the friend of Sidonius Apollinaris,[429] was, in his day, only less renowned. He asserted the materiality of the soul. Both were able writers; and Pelagius was the first to adopt the plan of promulgating his heresies not as his own, but as the tenets of supposititious individuals of his acquaintance.

F. 4.--Pelagianism spread so widely in Britain that the Catholics implored for aid from over-sea. St. Germanus of Auxerre, and St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes (whose sanctity had disarmed the ferocity even of Attila), came[430] accordingly (in 429) and vindicated the faith in a synod held at Verulam so successfully that the neighbouring shrine of St. Alban was the scene of a special service of thanksgiving. In a second Mission, fifteen years later, Germanus set the seal to his work, stamping out throughout all the land both this new heresy and such remains of heathenism as were still to be found in Southern Britain. While thus engaged on the Border he found his work endangered by a raiding host of Picts or Saxons, or both. The Saint, who had been a military chieftain in his youth, promptly took the field at the head of his flock, many of whom were but newly baptized. It was Easter Eve, and he took advantage of the sacred ceremonies of that holy season, which were then actually performed by night. From the New Fire, the "Lumen Christi," was kindled a line of beacons along the Christian lines, and when Germanus intoned the threefold Easter Alleluia, the familiar strain was echoed from lip to lip throughout the host. Stricken with panic at the sudden outburst of light and song, the enemy, without a blow, broke and fled.[431]

F. 5.--This story, as told by Constantius, and confirmed by both Nennius and Bede, incidentally furnishes us with something of a key to the main difficulty in accepting the widely-spread Romano-British Christianity to which the foregoing citations testify. What, it is asked, has become of all the Romano-British churches? Why are no traces of them found amongst the abundant Roman remains all over the land? That they were the special objects of destruction at the Saxon invasion we learn from Gildas. But this does not account for their very foundations having disappeared; yet at Silchester[432] alone have modern excavations unearthed any even approximately certain example of them. Where are all the rest?

F. 6.--The question is partly answered when we read that the soldiers of Germanus had erected in their camp a church of wattle, and that such was the usual material of which, even as late as 446, British churches were built (as at Glastonbury). Seldom indeed would such leave any trace behind them; and thus the country churches of Roman Britain would be sought in vain by excavators. In the towns, however, stone or brick would assuredly be used, and to account for the paucity of ecclesiastical ruins three answers may be suggested.

F. 7.--First, the number of continuously unoccupied Romano-British cities is very small indeed. Except at Silchester, Anderida, and Uriconium, almost every one has become an English town. But when this took place early in the English settlement of the land, the ruins of the Romano-British churches would still be clearly traceable at the conversion of the English, and would be rebuilt (as St. Martin's at Canterbury was in all probability rebuilt)[433] for the use of English Christianity, the old material[434] being worked up into the new edifices. It is probable that many of our churches thus stand on the very spot where the Romano-British churches stood of old. But this very fact would obliterate the remains of these churches.

F. 8.--Secondly, it is very possible that many of the heathen temples may, after the edict of Theodosius (A.D. 392), have been turned into churches (like the Pantheon at Rome), so that _their_ remains may mark ecclesiastical sites. There are reasons for believing that in various places, such as St. Paul's, London, St. Peter's, Cambridge, and St. Mary's, Ribchester, Christian worship did actually thus succeed Pagan on the same site.

F. 9.--Thirdly, as Lanciani points out, the earliest Christian churches were simply the ordinary dwelling-houses of such wealthier converts as were willing to permit meetings for worship beneath their roof, which in time became formally consecrated to that purpose. Such a dwelling-house usually consisted of an oblong central hall, with a pillared colonnade, opening into a roofed cloister or peristyle on either side, at one end into a smaller guest-room [_tablinum_], at the other into the porch of entry. The whole was arranged thus:

Small Guest Room. P P e e r r i Central Hall, i s with pillars s t on each side t y (often roofless). y l l e e Porch of Entry.

It will be readily seen that we have here a building on the lines of an ordinary church. The small original congregation would meet, like other guests, in the reception-room. As numbers increased, the hall and adjoining cloisters would have to be used (the former being roofed in); the reception-room being reserved for the most honoured members, and ultimately becoming the chancel of a fully-developed church, with nave and aisles complete.[435] It _may_ be, therefore, that some of the Roman villas found in Britain were really churches.[436]

F. 10.--This, however, is a less probable explanation of the absence of ecclesiastical remains; and the large majority of Romano-British church sites are, as I believe, still in actual use amongst us for their original purpose. And it may be considered as fairly proved, that before Britain was cut off from the Empire the Romano-British Church had a rite[437] and a vigorous corporate life of its own, which the wave of heathen invasion could not wholly submerge. It lived on, shattered, perhaps, and disorganized, but not utterly crushed, to be strengthened in due time by a closer union with its parent stem, through the Mission of Augustine, to feel the reflex glow of its own missionary efforts in the fervour of Columba and his followers,[438] and, finally, to form an integral part of that Ecclesia Anglicana whose influence knit our country into one, and inspired the Great Charter of our constitutional liberties.[439] Her faith and her freedom are the abiding debt which Britain owes to her connection with Rome.

INDEX

Aaron of Caerleon, 259 Addeomarus, 130 Adder-beads, 71 Adelfius, 259 Adminius, 126, 128, 130 Aetius, 245 Agricola, 156, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165 Agriculture, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 191, 231 Agrippina, 140, 149, 150 Akeman Street, 166 Alaric, 237, 243 Alban, St., 227, 259 Albany, 247 Albinus, 200 Albion, 32 Alexander Severus, 71 Allectus, 220, 223, 224, 231 Alleluia Battle, 264 Alpine dogs, 191 Amber, 48, 49 Ambleteuse, 86, 95 Amboglanna, 174, 204 Aminus. _See_ Adminius Amphitheatres, 185, 224 Ancalites, 55, 120 Ancyran Tablet, 128 Anderida, 56, 240, 250, 265 Anglesey, 154, 161 Antedrigus, 131, 146 Antonines, 213 Antoninus Pius, 171, 197, 214 Aquae Sulis, 183. _See_ Bath Aquila, 257 Arianism, 230 Arms, 49, 178 Army of Britain, 159, 160, 199, 200, 218, 228, 230, 235, 242 Army of Church, 268 Arthur, 247 Arthur's Well, 205 Asclepiodotus, 224 Ash-pits, 177, 186 Asturians, 204, 205 Atrebates, 55, 56, 82, 87, 125, 127, 142 Attacotti, 46, 194, 233 Augusta, 180, 233 Augustine, 243 Augustus, 128, 129 Avebury, 30

Bards, 66 Barham Down, 110, 114 Barns, British, 40 Barrows, 29, 60 Basilicas, 185 Baskets, 43 Basques, 51 Bath, 60, 170, 174, 183 Battle Bridge, 157 Beads, 48, 128 Beatus, St., 262 Bee-keeping, 42 Beer, 42 Belgae, 52, 57, 61 Belisarius, 249 Bericus. _See_ Vericus Bibroci, 55, 56, 120 Birdoswald, 174, 203, 204 Bishops, British, 230, 255, 259 Boadicea, 152, 157, 158, 253 Borcovicus, 205 Boulogne, 86, 220, 223, 233 Breeches, 47 Brigantes, 49, 57, 146, 148, 160, 197, 206 Brige, 175 Britain, "Upper" and "Lower," 195 Britannia coins, 197 Britannia I. and II., 59, 225 Britannicus, 136, 140, 199 British coins, 38, 125, 126, 127 " Lion, 126, 210 221 Britons, Origin of, 32 Brittany, 235 Bronze, 30, 33 Brownies, 29 Brutus, 151

Cadiz, 34 Cadwallon. _See_ Cassivellaunus Caer Caradoc, 148 Caergwent, 184 Caerleon, 150, 166, 179, 182, 195, 239, 259 Caer Segent, 56 Caesar, Julius: Earlier career, 73-83 First invasion, 83-101 Second invasion, 102-123 Caesar (as title), 222 Caesar's horse, 107 Caledonians, 163, 194, 201, 202, 213, 232 Caligula, 126, 130 Calleva, 56, 172, etc. _See_ Silchester Cambridge, 171, 175, 178, 266 Camelodune, 127, 135, 147, 152, 154, 176 Cangi, 146 Cannibalism, 46, 233 Canterbury, 265 Caracalla, 171, 201, 212-214 Caractacus (Caradoc, Caratac), 127, 134, 137, 147, 148, 149 Carausius, 180, 220, 221, 245 Carlisle, 175, 204 Cartismandua, 148, 150, 160 Cassi, 54, 55, 120 Cassiterides, 34 Cassivellaunus (Caswallon), 109, 113-122, 127 Cateuchlani (Cattivellauni), 55, 58, 59, 109, 121, 127 Cattle, British, 45 Celestine, Pope, 263 Celtic types, 50 Cerealis, 160 Cerne Abbas, 65 Chariots, British, 50, 92, 99, 115, 129, 134, 163 Charnwood, 190 Chedworth, 58, 267 Chester, 162, 167, 174, 179, 182, 195, 247, 250 "Chester" (suffix), 175, 183, 250 Chesters. _See_ Cilurnum Chichester, 141 Chives, 205 Christianity, British, 225-230, 251-268 Churches, British, 185, 264-267 Cicero, 36, 75, 77, 104-106, 122, 151 Cilurnum, 204, 205, 211 Cirencester, 225. _See_ Corinium Citizenship, Roman, 140, 141, 213, 214 Clans, British, 52, 55-59 Claudia Rufina, 141, 256, 257 Claudius, 131, 134-143, 147, 149, 150 Clement, St., 252 Climate, British, 40, 185 Cogidubnus, 141, 256 Cohorts, 86, 114, 239 Coins, British, 38, 54, 125-127 " Romano-British, 139, 177, 197, 221, 246 Colchester (Colonia), 167, 171, 175, 176, 222. _See_ Camelodune Colonies, 147, 152-154, 175 Columba, 71, 72, 268 Comitatenses, 239 Commius, 54, 83, 87, 94, 101, 121, 124-127, 130 Commodus, 199, 200 Constans, 230 Constantine I., 222, 227-229 " III., 242 Constantius I., 180, 222-224, 227-229 Constantius II., 231, 260 Cony Castle, 30 Coracles, 37, 245 Corinium 179, 189-191. _See_ Cirencester Corn-growing, 40, 191, 231 Coronation Oath, 260 Council of Ariminum, 230, 260 " Arles, 230, 259 " Cloveshoo, 267 " Constance, 255 " Nice, 230 Count of Britain, 240, 243, 247 " the Saxon Shore, 220, 240, 243 Counts of the Empire, 240 Coway Stakes, 119 Cromlechs, 29 Cymbeline (Cunobelin), 54, 126-128 Cymry, 247

Damnonii, 57, 58, 61, 80, 247 Deal, 89, 108 Decangi, 146 Decentius, 231 Decurions, 182 Dedication of churches, 261 Dene Holes, 41 "Dioceses," 222 Diocletian, 59, 71, 219, 221, 222, 224-227 Divitiacus, 82, 109 Divorce, 259 "Divus," 123, 227 Dobuni, 57, 132 Dogs, British, 190 Dol, 235 Dolmens, 29 Domestic animals, 45, 46 Domitian, 163 Domitilla, 257 Dorchester, 61 Dover, 87 Dragon standard, 244 "Druidesses," 71, 154, 155 Druidism, 62-72 Duke of the Britains, 239, 243, 247 Duke of the Britons, 245 Duns, 60 Durotriges, 57, 61

Eagles, Legionary, 90, 91, 228 Eboracum, 174 Eborius, 259 Elephants, 107, 119, 134 Eleutherius, 258 Emeriti, 214 English, 232, 245, 246 Epping Forest, 47, 190 Equinoctial hours, 39, 40 Erinus Hispanicus, 204 Ermine Street, 166-170 Exports, British, 128, 129

Fastidius, Faustus, 263 Flavians, 133 Fleam Dyke, 144, 145 Fleet, British, 182, 221 Forests, 47, 56-58, 189 Fosse Way, 166, 167, 169 Frampton, 267 Franks, 219, 224, 237 Frisians, 200, 220, 248 Fruit-trees, 186

Gael, 32, 50 Galerius, 222, 227, 228 Galgacus, 163 Galloway, 46, 194, 233, 248, 261 Gates of London, 179 Geese, 46 Gelt, R., 210 Genuini, 197 Germanus, 263-265 Gerontius (Geraint), 242 Geta, 201, 213 Gladiators, 136, 137, 224 Glass, 48, 129 Glastonbury, 27, 57, 254, 255 Glazed ware, 188 Gnossus, 37 Gog-Magog Hills, 219 Gold, 30, 39, 48 Goths, 249 Grindelwald, 262 Gulf Stream, 40

Hadrian, 181, 194-197 Hair-dye, 48, 129 Handicrafts, 187, 188 Hardway, 36 Hasta Pura, 138 Havre, 223 Helena, 222, 227 "Hengist and Horsa," 245 Heretics, 263 Honorius, 242, 243 Horseshoes, 177 Hounds, 190 Hugh, St., 185 Huntingdon, 171 Hypocausts, 189, 205

Iberians, 51 Iceni, 54, 57, 58, 59, 120, 130, 142-146, 152, 157, 170 Icknield Street, 144, 145, 167, 170, 186 Ictis, 35 Ierne, 32, 234, 236. _See_ Ireland Immanuentius, 109 Imperial visits, 134, 194, 201, 223, 230 Ireland, 162, 232, 262, 268. _See_ Ierne Iron, 33, 50 Itinerary, 171, 172, 173, 175

Jadite, 29 Jerome, St., 46, 191, 233, 260 Jerusalem, 160, 181, 260 Joseph of Arimathaea, 254 Julia Domna, 209, 210, 213 " Lex, 192, 243 Julian, 191, 225, 231, 232 Julianus, 200 Julius Caesar. _See_ Caesar " Classicianus, 158 " Firmicus, 230 " of Caerleon, 259 Juridicus Britanniae, 181 Justinian, 181, 248 Justus, 262

Kalendar of Druids, 64 "Keels," Saxon, 221, 245 Kent, 55, 121, 127, 142, 247-249 Kilns, 187 King's Cross, 157 Koridwen, 155

Labarum, 188, 228, 229, 267 Labienus, 107, 122, 123 Lambeth, 168 Lead-mining, 39, 146, 188 Legates, 141, 197, 200, 232 Legion II., 133, 150, 157, 174, 182, 239 " VI., 174, 182, 239 " VII., 99 " IX., 133, 154, 157, 178, 181, 194 " X., 91, 99 " XIV., 133, 150, 156, 160 " XX., 133, 150, 157, 160, 174, 182, 234, 237, 240 Legionary feeling, 91, 157 Legions, Roman, 86, 90, 91, 231, 238, 239 Leicester, 183 Libelli, 226 Liber Landavensis, 259 Licinius, 228 Ligurians, 51 Lincoln, 171, 175, 185, 250, 259 Linus, 257 Lion, British, 126, 210, 221 Loddon, R., 134 Logris, 51 Lollius Urbicus, 197, 198 London, 60, 117, 118, 122, 154, 156, 157, 166, 168, 169, 171, 179-183, 224, 233, 241, 250, 259 Lupicinus, 232 Lupus, 263 Lyminge, 265 Lyons, 200, 258

Magna, 208 Magnentius, 230, 231 Maiden Castle, 61 " Way, 169 Mandubratius, 109, 122, 127 Mansions, 189 Manures, 40 Marcus Aurelius, 215 Marseilles, 35, 38 Martial, 43, 141, 255-257 Martin, St., 261, 262 Martyrs, British, 227, 259 Mastiffs, 190 Mater Deum, 209, 210 Maxentius, 228 Maximian, 222, 225, 227, 228 Maximin, 228 Maximus, 235 Mead, 42 Meatae, 201, 202, 232 Mendips, 39, 188 Mile Castles, 195, 204 Milestones, 180 Millstones, 44 Missionaries, British, 261, 262 Mistletoe, 67, 68 Mithraism, 207, 208, 228 Mona, 154, 155, 161 Money-box, 184 Morgan, 263 Mutter-recht, 46

Narcissus, 131 Needwood, 58, 190 Nennius, 171-173, 244-247 Neolithic Age, 28-30 Nero, 151, 158, 159 Nervii, 54 Newcastle, 204 Ninias, 261, 262, 264 North Tyne R., 211 Notitia, 171, 173, 174, 237-242

Oberland, 262 Ocean, 33, 85, 97, 122, 131, 236, 238, 256 Ogre, 29 "Old England's Hole," 111 Optio, 211 Ordovices, 57, 147, 161 Ostorius, 142-149 Otho, 159, 160

Paganism suppressed, 230 Palaeolithic period, 26-28 Pansa, 198 Pantheon, Druidic, 62, 64 Parisii, 54, 58, 82 Parjetting, 187 Patrick, St., 71, 262 Paul, St., 251-257 Pax Romana, 165, 178, 187 Pearls, British, 128 Peel Crag, 203 Pelagius, 263 Perennis, 199 Pertinax, 200 Peter, St., 252, 253 Petronius, 158 Phoenicians, 33-37 Picts, 193, 207, 232-236, 245, 259, 261, 264 Pilgrims, British, 260 Pilgrims' Way, 36 Pillars, multiple, 185 Pilum, 158 Pirates, 219-221, 235, 245 Plautius, 131, 134, 137, 147, 256 Plough, British, 40 Pomponia, 256 Population, 59, 178 Portsmouth Harbour, 132, 240, 252 Port Way, 186 Posidonius, 36, 82 Posting, 189, 227 Postumus, 218 Pottery, 30, 187 Praetorium, 181 Prasutagus, 152 Precedents, British, 182 Prefectures, 221 Prince of Wales, 247 Priscilla, 257 Priscus, 159 Probus, 192, 218 Pro-consuls, 74, 77, 142, 198 Procurator of Britain, 152, 153, 158 Prosper, 263 Provinces, 59, 74, 77, 195, 198, 222, 225, 230, 240 Ptolemy, 171-175 Pudens, 141, 256, 257 Pytheas, 34-36, 38-40, 42, 45, 49, 51, 55

Querns, 44 Quiberon, Battle off, 81 Quintus Cicero, 104, 105, 106

Radagaisus, 237 Rampart of Agricola, 163, 194, 198, 201, 234 Rationalis Britanniarum, 241 Regni, 57, 142 Ribchester, 176, 266 Richborough, 88, 108, 121, 175, 223, 233, 235, 239 Rings, 186 Rite, British, 267 River-bed men, 26, 27 Rogation Days, 267 Roman citizenship, 140, 141, 213, 214 Roman roads, 117, 166-171 Royal roads, 167 Rycknield Street, 166, 170

Saexe, 219, 246 Sallustius Lucullus, 164 Samian pottery, 188 "Sarsen," 30, 31 Sarum, 175 Saturnalia, 132 Saxons, 193, 206, 219, 233, 234, 236, 238, 244, 245 _See_ English Saxon Shore, 219 Scotch dogs, 191 Scots, 232-238, 246, 262 Scythed chariots, 100 Seers, 66 Segontium, 127, 172, 228 Selwood, 38, 190 Seneca, 140, 152 Settle, 251 Severus, 200-203, 209-213, 231 Sherwood, 58, 190 Shields, British, 49, 50 " Roman, 178 Ships, British, 37, 80 " Venetian, 79, 80 " Caesar's, 81, 103 " Scotch, 232 " Saxon, 245 Silchester, 56, 162, 175,179, 183-188, 264, 265 Silurians, 51, 57, 146-150, 161 Silver, 39, 186 Simon Magus, 71 " Zelotes, 253 "Snake's Egg," 70, 71 South Foreland, 89 Spain, 77, 103, 155, 200, 222, 242 Squads, 239 Squared word, 189 Stamford, Battle of, 232, 246 Staters, 38 "Stations," 202, 203 Stilicho, 235-237, 242 Stoke-by-Nayland, 265 Stonehenge, 30, 31 "Streets," 169 Suetonius Paulinus, 154-158, 161 Sul, 183 Sussex, 50, 128, 142 Sylla, 75 Syracuse, 219

Tabulae Missionis, 214 Tartan, 47 Tasciovan, 54, 127, 128, 130, 156 Tattooing, 48 Taxation, 192 Thames, 56, 117-119, 122, 134 Thanet, 36, 108, 245 Theatres, 153, 184 Theodosius the Elder, 233, 234 " " Great, 230, 235, 242, 268 Thimbles, Roman, 177 Tides, 88, 93, 96, 108, 124, 233 Tin, 33-38. 128 Tincommius, 54, 125, 128 Titus, 133, 137 Togodumnus, 134, 147 Tonsure, Druidic, 72 Treasury, 180, 241 Trebatius, 104 Trees, 47 Tribal boundaries, 56-58 Tribune, 114, 138, 209, 239 Trident, 49 Trinobantes, 55, 57, 59, 109, 122, 127 Triumphs, 135, 149 Tufa, 244, 247 Turf wall, 197, 198, 206 Tyrants, 53, 54, 247

"Ugrians," 29-31, 62 Ulpius Marcellus, 199, 211 Ulysses, 64, 248 Uriconium, 150, 179, 184 Ushant, 155 Uther, 244

Valens, 234 Valentia, 225, 234, 237, 240 Valentinian I., 230, 233 " II., 235 " III., 177, 246 Vallum, 205-207, 233 Vandals, 219, 237 Varus, 130 Veneti, 79-81 Verica, 125 Vericus, 130, 142, 143, 152 Verulam, 120, 127, 156, 157, 168, 227, 263 Vespasian, 133, 137, 159 Vexillatio, 210 Via Devana, 166, 167 Vicar of Britain, 240, 243 Victorinus, 218 Villages, 27, 44, 45, 129 Villas, 188, 189, 267 Vine-growing, 192 Visi-goths, 243 Volisius, 54 Vortigern, 245

Wagons, 36 Wall (of Hadrian), 174, 195, 196, 202-212 Wall (of London, etc.), 179 Water-supply, 60, 162, 211 Watling Street, 118, 166-170 Wattle churches, 254, 255, 265 Weald, 57, 189 Wells, 186 West Saxons, 248 Whitherne, 261, 262 Wight, I. of, 36, 133, 189, 224 Winchester, 175 Winter thorn, 254

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Published by the Record Office, 1848.]

[Footnote 2: Published by the Royal Academy of Berlin. Vol. VII. contains the Romano-British Inscriptions.]

[Footnote 3: His later books only survive in the epitome of Xiphilinus, a Byzantine writer of the 13th century.]

[Footnote 4: See p. 171.]

[Footnote 5: See p. 256.]

[Footnote 6: In the British (?) village near Glastonbury the bases of shed antlers are found hafted for mallets.]

[Footnote 7: This name is simply given for archaeological convenience, to indicate that these aborigines were non-Aryan, and perhaps of Turanian affinity.]

[Footnote 8: Skeat, however, traces "ogre" (the Spanish "ogro") to the Latin _Orcus_.]

[Footnote 9: The latest excavations (1902) prove Stonehenge to be a Neolithic erection. No metal was found, but quantities of flint implements, broken in the arduous task of dressing the great Sarsen monoliths. The process seems to have been that still used for granite, viz. to cut parallel channels on the rough surface, and then break and rub down the ridges between. This was done by the use of conical lumps of Sarsen stone, weighing from 20 to 60 lbs., several of which were discovered bearing traces of usage, both in pounding and rubbing. The monoliths examined were found to be thus tooled accurately down to the very bottom, 8 or 9 feet below ground. At Avebury the stones are not dressed.]

[Footnote 10: _Sarsen_ is the same word as _Saracen_, which in mediaeval English simply means _foreign_ (though originally derived from the Arabic _sharq_ = Eastern). Whence the stones came is still disputed. They _may_ have been boulders deposited in the district by the ice-drift of the Glacial Epoch.]

[Footnote 11: Professor Rhys assigns 600 B.C. as the approximate date of the first Gadhelic arrivals, and 200 B.C. as that of the first Brythonic.]

[Footnote 12: Whether or no this word is (as some authorities hold) derived from the Welsh _Prutinach_ (=Picts) rather than from the Brythons, it must have reached Aristotle through Brythonic channels, for the Gadhelic form is _Cruitanach_.]

[Footnote 13: A certain amount of British folk-lore was brought back to Greece, according to Plutarch ('De defect. orac.' 2), by the geographer Demetrias of Tarsus about this time. He refers to the cavern of sleeping heroes, so familiar in our mediaeval legends.]

[Footnote 14: The word is said to be derived from the root _kâsh_, "shine." Some authorities, however, maintain that it came into Sanscrit from the Greek.]

[Footnote 15: 'Hist.' III. 112.]

[Footnote 16: See p. 48.]

[Footnote 17: For a full notice of Pytheas see Elton, 'Origins of English History,' pp. 13-75. See also Tozer's 'Ancient Geography,' chap. viii.]

[Footnote 18: Posidonius of Rhodes, the tutor of Cicero, visited Britain about 100 B.C., and wrote a History of his travels in fifty volumes, only known to us by extracts in Strabo (iii. 217, iv. 287, vii. 293), Diodorus Siculus (v. 28, 30), Athenaeus, and others. See Bake's 'Posidonius' (Leyden, 1810).]

[Footnote 19: The ingots of bronze found in the recent [1900] excavations at Gnossus, in Crete, which date approximately from 2000 B.C., are of this shape. Presumably the Britons learnt it from Phoenician sources.]

[Footnote 20: _Saxon_ coracles are spoken of even in the 5th century A.D. See p. 245.]

[Footnote 21: 'Coins of the Ancient Britons,' p. 24.]

[Footnote 22: This familiar feature of our climate is often touched on by classical authors. Minucius Felix (A.D. 210) is observant enough to connect it with our warm seas, "its compensation," due to the Gulf Stream.]

[Footnote 23: 'Nat. Hist.' xviii. 18.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid_. xvii. 4.]

[Footnote 25: Solinus (A.D. 80) adds that bees, like snakes, were unknown in Ireland, and states that bees will even desert a hive if Irish earth be brought near it!]

[Footnote 26: Matthew Martin, 'Western Isles,' published 1673. Quoted by Elton ('Origins of English Hist.,' p. 16), who gives Martin's date as 1703.]

[Footnote 27: Strabo, iv. 277. The word _basket_ is itself of Celtic origin, and passed into Latin as it has passed into English. Martial ('Epig.' xiv. 299) says: "Barbara de pictis veni _bascauda_ Britannis." Strabo wrote shortly before, Martial shortly after, the Roman Conquest of Britain.]

[Footnote 28: One of these primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was found near Cambridge in 1885.]

[Footnote 29: Diod. Siculus, 'Hist.' v. 21.]

[Footnote 30: 'British Barrows,' p. 750.]

[Footnote 31: 'Geog.' IV.]

[Footnote 32: 'Legend of Montrose,' ch. xxii.]

[Footnote 33: Diod. Sic. v. 30: "Saga crebris tessellis florum instar distincta." This _sagum_ was obviously a tartan plaid such as are now in use. The kilt, however, was not worn. It is indeed a comparatively quite modern adaptation of the belted plaid. Ancient Britons wore trousers, drawn tight above the ankles, after the fashion still current amongst agricultural labourers. They were already called "breeches." Martial (Ep. x. 22) satirizes a life "as loose as the old breeches of a British pauper."]

[Footnote 34: Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' viii. 48.]

[Footnote 35: _Id_. xxviii. 2. Fashions about hair seem to have changed as rapidly amongst Britons (throughout the whole period of this work) as in later times. The hair was sometimes worn short, sometimes long, sometimes strained back from the forehead; sometimes moustaches were in vogue, sometimes a clean shave, more rarely a full beard; but whiskers were quite unknown.]

[Footnote 36: Tozer ('Ancient Geog.' p. 164) states that amber is also exported from the islands fringing the west coast of Schleswig, and considers that these rather than the Baltic shores were the "Amber Islands" of Pytheas.]

[Footnote 37: 'Nat. Hist.' xxxvii. 1.]

[Footnote 38: See p. 128.]

[Footnote 39: A lump weighing nearly 12 lbs. was dredged up off Lowestoft in 1902.]

[Footnote 40: A.D. 50.]

[Footnote 41: Seneca speaks of the blue shields of the Yorkshire Brigantes.]

[Footnote 42: See Elton, 'Origins of English History,' p. 116.]

[Footnote 43: Thurnam, 'British Barrows' (Archaeol. xliii. 474).]

[Footnote 44: Propertius, iv. 3, 7.]

[Footnote 45: 'Celtic Britain,' p. 40.]

[Footnote 46: This seems the least difficult explanation of this strange name. An alternative theory is that it = _Cenomanni_ (a Gallic tribe-name also found in Lombardy). But with this name (which must have been well known to Caesar) we never again meet in Britain. And it is hard to believe that he would not mention a clan so important and so near the sphere of his campaign as the Iceni.]

[Footnote 47: See p. 109.]

[Footnote 48: These tribes are described by Vitruvius, at the Christian era, as of huge stature, fair, and red-haired. Skeletons of this race, over six feet in height, have been discovered in Yorkshire buried in "monoxylic" coffins; i.e. each formed of the hollowed trunk of an oak tree. See Elton's 'Origins,' p. 168.]

[Footnote 49: This correspondence, however, is wholly an antiquarian guess, and rests on no evidence. It is first found in the forged chronicle of "Richard of Cirencester." The _names_ are genuine, being found in the 'Notitia,' though dating only from the time of Diocletian (A.D. 296). But, on our theory, the same administrative divisions must have existed all along. See p. 225.]

[Footnote 50: General Pitt Rivers, however, in his 'Excavations in Cranborne Chase' (vol. ii. p. 237), proves that the ancient water level in the chalk was fifty feet higher than at present, presumably owing to the greater forest area. "Dew ponds" may also have existed in these camps. But these can scarcely have provided any large supply of water.]

[Footnote 51: The word is commonly supposed to represent a Celtic form _Mai-dun_. But this is not unquestionable.]

[Footnote 52: 'De Bello Gall.' vi. 13.]

[Footnote 53: 'De Bell. Gall.' vi. 14.]

[Footnote 54: Jerome ('Quaest. in Gen.' ii.) says that Varro, Phlegon, and all learned authors testify to the spread of Greek [at the Christian era] "from Taurus to Britain." And Solinus (A.D. 80) tells of a Greek inscription in Caledonia, "ara Graecis literis scripta"--as a proof that Ulysses (!) had wandered thither (Solinus, 'Polyhistoria,' c. 22). See p. 248.]

[Footnote 55: 'De Bell, Gall.' vi. 16.]

[Footnote 56: 'Hist.' v. 31.]

[Footnote 57: 'Celtic Britain,' p. 69.]

[Footnote 58: 'Nat. Hist.' xvi. 95.]

[Footnote 59: So Caesar, 'De Bell. Gall.' vi. 17.]

[Footnote 60: Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' xxiv. 62. Linnaeus has taken _selago_ as his name for club-moss, but Pliny here compares the herb to _savin_, which grows to the height of several feet. _Samolum_ is water-pimpernel in the Linnaean classification. Others identify it with the _pasch-flower_, which, however, is far from being a marsh plant.]

[Footnote 61: Suetonius (A.D. 110), 'De xii. Caes.' v. 25.]

[Footnote 62: Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' xxx. 3.]

[Footnote 63: Tacitus, 'Annals,' xiv. 30. See p. 154.]

[Footnote 64: Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' xxix. 12.]

[Footnote 65: See Brand, 'Popular Antiquities,' under _Ovum Anguinum_. He adds that _Glune_ is the Irish for glass.]

[Footnote 66: Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus, tells us of a "Druid" sorceress who warned the Emperor of his approaching doom. Another such "Druidess" is said to have foretold Diocletian's rise. See Coulanges, '_Comme le Druidisme a disparu_,' in the _Revue Celtique_, iv. 37.]

[Footnote 67: See Professor Rhys, 'Celtic Britain,' p. 70. The Professor's view that the "schismatical" tonsure of the Celtic clergy, which caused such a stir during the evangelization of England, was a Druidical survival, does not, however, seem probable in face of the very pronounced antagonism between those clergy and the Druids. That tonsure was indeed ascribed by its Roman denouncers to Simon Magus [see above], but this is scarcely a sufficient foundation for the theory.]

[Footnote 68: They may very possibly have been connected with the Veneti of Venice at the other extremity of "the Gauls."]

[Footnote 69: See p. 37.]

[Footnote 70: Caesar, 'Bell. Gall.' iii. 9, 13.]

[Footnote 71: Elton, 'Origins of English Hist.,' p. 237. Though less massive, these vessels are built much as the Venetian. But it is just as probable they may really be "picts." See p. 232.]

[Footnote 72: This opening of Britain to continental influences may perhaps account for Posidonius having been able to make so thorough a survey of the islands. See p. 36.]

[Footnote 73: Elton ('Origins of English Hist.') conjectures that these tribes did not migrate to Britain till after Caesar's day. But there is no evidence for this, and my view seems better to explain the situation.]

[Footnote 74: Solinus (A.D. 80) says of Britain, "_alterius orbis nomen mereretur_." This passage is probably the origin of the Pope's well-known reference to St. Anselm, when Archbishop of Canterbury, as "_quasi alterius orbis antistes_."]

[Footnote 75: A Roman legion at this date comprised ten "cohorts," _i.e._ some six thousand heavy-armed infantry, besides a small light-armed contingent, and an attached squadron of three hundred cavalry. Each of Caesar's transports must thus have carried from one hundred and fifty to two hundred men, and at this rate the eighteen cavalry vessels (reckoning a horse as equivalent to five men, the usual proportion for purposes of military transport) would suffice for his two squadrons.]

[Footnote 76: An ancient ship could not sail within eight points of the wind (see Smith, 'Voyage of St. Paul'). Thus a S.W. breeze, while permitting Caesar to leave Boulogne, would effectually prevent these vessels from working out of Ambleteuse.]

[Footnote 77: Hence the name Dubris = "the rivers."]

[Footnote 78: The claims of Richborough [Ritupis] to be Caesar's actual landing-place have been advocated by Archdeacon Baddeley, Mr. G. Bowker, and others. But it is almost impossible to make this place square with Caesar's narrative.]

[Footnote 79: This was four days before the full moon, so that the tide would be high at Dover about 6 p.m.]

[Footnote 80: The "lofty promontory" rounded is specially noticed by Dio Cassius.]

[Footnote 81: The principle of the balista that of the sling, of the catapult that of the bow. Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 12) speaks of "the snowy arms" of the Celtic women dealing blows "like the stroke of a catapult."]

[Footnote 82: Valerius Maximus (A.D. 30) has recorded one such act of daring on the part of a soldier named Scaeva, who with four comrades held an isolated rock against all comers till he alone was left, when he plunged into the sea and swam off, with the loss of his shield. In spite of this disgrace Caesar that evening promoted him on the field. The story has a suspicious number of variants, but off Deal there _is_ such a patch of rocks, locally called the Malms; so that it may possibly be true ('Memorabilia,' III. 2, 23).]

[Footnote 83: Valerius Maximus (A.D. 30) states that the Romans landed on a _falling_ tide, which cannot be reconciled with Caesar's own narrative (see p. 88). The idea may have originated in the fact that it was probably the approaching turn of the tide which forced him to land at Deal. He could not have reached Richborough before the ebb began.]

[Footnote 84: Every soldier was four feet from his nearest neighbour to give scope for effective sword-play. No other troops in history have ever had the morale thus to fight at close quarters.]

[Footnote 85: See Plutarch, 'De placitis philosophorum.']

[Footnote 86: Each chariot may have carried six or seven men, like those of the Indian King Porus. See Dodge, 'Alexander,' p. 554.]

[Footnote 87: Pomponius Mela ('De Situ Orbis,' I) tells us that by his date (50 A.D.) it had come in: "Covinos vocant, quorum falcatis axîbus utuntur."]

[Footnote 88: It is thus represented by Giraldus Cambrensis, who gives us the story of Caesar's campaigns from the British point of view, as it survived (of course with gross exaggerations) in the Cymric legends of his day.]

[Footnote 89: Lucan, the last champion of anti-Caesarism, sung, two generations after its overthrow, the praises and the dirge of the Oligarchy.]

[Footnote 90: See my 'Alfred in the Chroniclers,' p. 44.]

[Footnote 91:'Ad Treb.' Ep. VI.]

[Footnote 92: 'Ad Treb.' Ep. VII.]

[Footnote 93: Ep. 10.]

[Footnote 94: Ep. 16.]

[Footnote 95: Ep. 17.]

[Footnote 96: IV. 15.]

[Footnote 97: III. 1.]

[Footnote 98: II. 16.]

[Footnote 99: II. 15.]

[Footnote 100: III. 10.]

[Footnote 101: Wace ('Roman de Ron,' 11,567) gives 696 as the exact total.]

[Footnote 102: 'Strategemata,' viii. 23.]

[Footnote 103: This was probably not Deal, which had not proved a satisfactory station, but Richborough, where the Wantsum, then a broad arm of the sea between Kent and Thanet, provided an excellent harbour for a large fleet. It was, moreover, the regular emporium of the tin trade (see p. 36), and a British trackway thus led to it.]

[Footnote 104: Otherwise _Cadwallon_, which, according to Professor Rhys, signifies War King, and may possibly have been a title rather than a personal name. But it remained in use as the latter for many centuries of British history.]

[Footnote 105: Vine, 'Caesar in Kent,' p. 171. The spot is "in Bourne Park, not far from the road leading up to Bridge Hill."]

[Footnote 106: See p. 244.]

[Footnote 107: See II. G. 8. The tradition of this sentiment long survived. Hegesippus (A.D. 150) says: "Britanni ... quidesse servitus ignorabant; soli sibi nati, semper sibi liberi" ('De Bello Judiaco,' II. 9).]

[Footnote 108: Polyaenus (A.D. 180) in his 'Strategemata' (viii. 23) ascribes their panic to Caesar's elephant. See p. 107.]

[Footnote 109: At Ilerda. See Dodge, 'Caesar,' xxviii.]

[Footnote 110: Frontinus (A.D. 90), 'Strategemata II.' xiii. II.]

[Footnote 111: Coins of all three bear the words COMMI. F. (_Commii Filius_), but Verica alone calls himself REX. Those of Eppillus were struck at Calleva (Silchester?).]

[Footnote 112: See p. 54.]

[Footnote 113: This is the spelling adopted by Suetonius.]

[Footnote 114: The lion was already a specially British emblem. Ptolemy ('de Judiciis II.' 3) ascribes the special courage of Britons to the fact that they are astrologically influenced by Leo and Mars. It is interesting to remember that our success in the Crimean War was prognosticated from Mars being in Leo at its commencement (March 1854). Tennyson, in 'Maud,' has referred to this--"And pointed to Mars, As he hung like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast."]

[Footnote 115: See p. 38.]

[Footnote 116: The site of this town is quite unknown. Caesar mentions the Segontiaci amongst the clans of S.E. Britain.]

[Footnote 117: In S.E. Essex, near Colchester. See p. 176.]

[Footnote 118: See pp. 109, 122.]

[Footnote 119: Aelian (A.D. 220), 'De Nat. Animal.' xv. 8.]

[Footnote 120: [Greek: Elephantina psalia, kai periauchenia, kai lingouria kai huala skeuê, kai rhôpos toioutos]. Strabo is commonly supposed to mean that these were the _imports_ from Gaul. But his words are quite ambiguous, and such of the articles he mentions as are found in Britain are clearly of native manufacture. British graves are fertile (see p. 48) in the "amber and glass ornaments" (the former being small roughly-shaped fragments pierced for threading, the latter coarse blue or green beads), and produce occasional armlets of narwhal ivory. Glass beads have been found (1898) in the British village near Glastonbury, and elsewhere.]

[Footnote 121: Strabo, v. 278.]

[Footnote 122: Propertius, II. 1. 73: Esseda caelatis siste Britanna jugis.]

[Footnote 123: _Ibid_. II. 18. 23. See p. 47.]

[Footnote 124: Virgil, 'Georg.' III. 24.]

[Footnote 125: Virgil, 'Eccl.' I. 65; Horace, 'Od.' I. 21. 13, 35. 30, III. 5. 3; Tibullus, IV. 1. 147; Propertius, IV. 3. 7.]

[Footnote 126: Suetonius, 'De XII. Caes.' IV. 19.]

[Footnote 127: The lofty spur of the Chiltern Hills which overhangs the church of Ellsborough is traditionally the site of his tomb.]

[Footnote 128: This whole episode is from 'Dio Cassius' (lib. xxxix. Section 50).]

[Footnote 129: He places Cirencester in their territory, while both Bath and Winchester belonged to the Belgae. To secure Winchester, where they would be on the line of the tin-trade road (see p. 36), would be the first object of the Romans if they did land at Portsmouth. Their further steps would depend upon the disposition of the British armies advancing to meet them,--the final objective of the campaign being Camelodune, the capital of the sons of Cymbeline.]

[Footnote 130: This is stated by both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Matthew of Westminster.]

[Footnote 131: For three centuries this legion was quartered at Caerleon-upon-Usk, and the Twentieth at Chester. See Mommsen, 'Roman Provinces,' p. 174.]

[Footnote 132: This was the honorary title of several legions; as there are several "Royal" regiments.]

[Footnote 133: Tac, 'Hist.' III. 44.]

[Footnote 134: The Flavian family was of very humble origin.]

[Footnote 135: Bede, from Suetonius, tells us that Vespasian with his legion fought in Britain thirty-two battles and took twenty towns, besides subduing the Isle of Wight ('Sex. Aet.' A.D. 80).]

[Footnote 136: If the Romans were advancing eastward from the Dobunian territory it may have been the Loddon. Mommsen cuts the knot in true German fashion by refusing to identify the Dobuni of Ptolemy with those of Dion, and placing the latter in Kent on his own sole authority. ('Roman Provinces,' p. 175.)]

[Footnote 137: [Greek: dusdiexoda.]]

[Footnote 138: See p. 139.]

[Footnote 139: 'Orosius,' VII. 5.]

[Footnote 140: A victorious Roman general was commonly thus hailed by his troops after any signal victory. But by custom this could only be done once in the same campaign.]

[Footnote 141: Suet. v. 21.]

[Footnote 142: Dio Cassius, lx. 23. The boy, who was the child of Messalina, had previously been named _Germanicus_.]

[Footnote 143: Suet. v. 28.]

[Footnote 144: Suet. v. 21.]

[Footnote 145: Tac., 'Ann.' xii. 56.]

[Footnote 146: Dio Cassius, lx. 30.]

[Footnote 147: Suet. v. 24.]

[Footnote 148: Dio Cassius, lx. 30.]

[Footnote 149: Eutropius, vii. 13.]

[Footnote 150: Muratori, Thes. mcii. 6.]

[Footnote 151: 'De XII. Caesaribus,' v. 28.]

[Footnote 152: Dio Cassius, lx. 23.]

[Footnote 153: See Haverfield in 'Authority and Archaeology,' p. 319]

[Footnote 154: 'Laus Claudii' (Burmann, 'Anthol.' ii. 8).]

[Footnote 155: See p. 152.]

[Footnote 156: The inscription runs thus:

NEPTVNO. ET. MINERVAE TEMPLVM _pro_ SALVTE. DO _mus_ DIVINAE _ex_ AVCTORITATE. _Ti_. CLAVD _Co_ GIDVBNI. R. LEGATI. AVG. IN. BRIT. _Colle_ GIVM. FABRO. ET. QVI. IN. E. . . . . . D.S.D. DONANTE. AREAM. _Pud_ ENTE. PVDENTINI. FIL_iae_

(The italics are almost certain restoration of illegible letters.)]

[Footnote 157: See p. 256.]

[Footnote 158: Claudia, the British Princess mentioned by Martial as making a distinguished Roman marriage, may very probably be his daughter.]

[Footnote 159: See p. 130.]

[Footnote 160: Thus in St. Luke ii. we find Cyrenius _Pro-praetor_ ([Greek: hêgemôn]) of Syria, but in Acts xviii. Gallio _Pro-consul_ ([Greek: hanthupatos]) of Achaia.]

[Footnote 161: See p. 131.]

[Footnote 162: See p. 170.]

[Footnote 163: His reputation for strength, skill, and daring cost him his life a few years later, under Nero (Tac, 'Ann.' xvi. 15).]

[Footnote 164: Pigs of lead have been found in Denbighshire stamped CANGI or DECANGI. Mr. Elton, however, locates the tribe in Somerset. Coins testify to Antedrigus, the Icenian, being somehow connected with this tribe.]

[Footnote 165: A Roman "Colony" was a town peopled by citizens of Rome (old soldiers being preferred) sent out in the first instance to dominate the subject population amid whom they were settled. Such was Philippi.]

[Footnote 166: Tacitus, 'Annals,' xii. 38.]

[Footnote 167: The distinction of an actual triumph was reserved for Emperors alone.]

[Footnote 168: Tacitus, 'Annals,' xii. 39.]

[Footnote 169: See p. 239. Uriconium alone has as yet furnished inscriptions of the famous Fourteenth Legion, _"Victores Britannici."_ (See p. 160.)]

[Footnote 170: 'Ep. ad Atticum,' vi. 1.]

[Footnote 171: See Dio Cassius, xii. 2.]

[Footnote 172: The Procurator of a Province was the Imperial Finance Administrator. (See Haverfield, 'Authority and Archaeology,' p. 310.)]

[Footnote 173: An inscription calls the place _Colonia Victricensis_.]

[Footnote 174: Tacitus, 'Ann.' xiv. 32.]

[Footnote 175: Demeter and Kore. M. Martin ('Hist. France,' i. 63) thinks there is here a confusion between the Greek Kore (Proserpine) and Koridwen, the White Fairy, the Celtic Goddess of the Moon and also (as amongst the Greeks) of maidenhood. But this is not proven.]

[Footnote 176: The former is Strabo's variant of the name (which may possibly be connected with [Greek: _semnos_]), the latter that of Dionysius Periegetes ('De Orbe,' 57). In Caesar we find a third form _Namnitae_, which Professor Rhys connects with the modern Nantes.]

[Footnote 177: See p. 127.]

[Footnote 178: As Agricola, his father-in-law, was actually with Suetonius, Tacitus had exceptional opportunities for knowing the truth.]

[Footnote 179: Suetonius probably retreated southward when he left London, and reoccupied its ruins when the Britons, instead of following him, turned northwards to Verulam.]

[Footnote 180: The Roman _pilum_ was a casting spear with a heavy steel head, nine inches long.]

[Footnote 181: Tac., 'Agricola,' c. 12.]

[Footnote 182: That the well-known coins commemorating these victories and bearing the legend IVDAEA CAPTA are not infrequently found in Britain, indicates the special connection between Vespasian and our island. The great argument used by Titus and Agrippa to convince the Jews that even the walls of Jerusalem would fail to resist the onset of Romans was that no earthly rampart could compare with the ocean wall of Britain (Josephus, D.B.J., II. 16, vi, 6).]

[Footnote 183: The spread of Latin oratory and literature in Britain is spoken of at this date by Juvenal (Sat. xv. 112), and Martial (Epig. xi. 3), who mentions that his own works were current here: "Dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia versus."]

[Footnote 184: Mr. Haverfield suggests that Silchester may also be an Agricolan city (see p. 184).]

[Footnote 185: Juvenal mentions these designs (II. 159):

"--Arma quidem ultra Litora Juvernae promovimus, et modo captas Orcadas, et minima contentos nocte Britannos" (i.e. those furthest north).]

[Footnote 186: According to Dio Cassius this voyage of discovery was first made by some deserters ('Hist. Rom.' lxix. 20).]

[Footnote 187: The little that is known of this rampart will be found in the next chapter (see p. 198).]

[Footnote 188: Sallustius Lucullus, who succeeded Agricola as Pro-praetor, was slain by Domitian only for the invention of an improved lance, known by his name (as rifles now are called Mausers, etc.).]

[Footnote 189: See p. 117.]

[Footnote 190: All highways were made Royal Roads before the end of the 12th century, so that the course of the original four became matter of purely antiquarian interest.]

[Footnote 191: Where it struck that sea is disputed, but Henry of Huntingdon's assertion that it ran straight from London to Chester seems the most probable.]

[Footnote 192: The lines of these roads, if produced, strike the Thames not at London Bridge, but at the old "Horse Ferry" to Lambeth. This _may_ point to an alternative (perhaps the very earliest) route.]

[Footnote 193: Guest ('Origines Celticae') derives "Ermine" from A.S. _eorm_=fen, and "Watling" from the Welsh Gwyddel=Goidhel=Irish. The Ermine Street, however, nowhere touches the fenland; nor did any Gaelic population, so far as is known, abut upon the Watling Street, at any rate after the English Conquest. Verulam was sometimes called Watling-chester, probably as the first town on the road.]

[Footnote 194: The distinction between "Street" and "Way" must not, however, be pressed, as is done by some writers. The Fosse Way is never called a Street, though its name [_fossa_] shows it to have been constructed as such; and the Icknield Way is frequently so called, though it was certainly a mere track--often a series of parallel tracks (_e.g._ at Kemble-in-the-Street in Oxfordshire)--as it mostly remains to this day.]

[Footnote 195: This may still be seen in places; _e.g._ on the "Hardway" in Somerset and the "Maiden Way" in Cumberland. See Codrington, 'Roman Roads in Britain.']

[Footnote 196: Camden, however, speaks of a Saxon charter so designating it near Stilton ('Britannia,' II. 249).]

[Footnote 197: The whole evidence on this confused subject is well set out by Mr. Codrington ('Roman Roads in Britain').]

[Footnote 198: It is, however, possible that the latter is named from Ake-manchester, which is found as A.S. for Bath, to which it must have formed the chief route from the N. East.]

[Footnote 199: See p. 144. Bradley, however, controverts this, pointing out that the pre-Norman authorities for the name only refer to Berkshire.]

[Footnote 200: Thus Iter V. takes the traveller from London to Lincoln _viâ_ Colchester, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, though the Ermine Street runs direct between the two. The 'Itinerary' is a Roadbook of the Empire, giving the stages on each route set forth, assigned by commentators to widely differing dates, from the 2nd century to the 5th. In my own view Caracalla is probably the Antoninus from whom it is called. But after Antoninus Pius (138 A.D.) the name was borne (or assumed) by almost every Emperor for a century and more.]

[Footnote 201: See p. 237.]

[Footnote 202: Ptolemy also marks, in his map of Britain, some fifty capes, rivers, etc., and the Ravenna list names over forty.]

[Footnote 203: The longitude is reckoned from the "Fortunate Isles," the most western land known to Ptolemy, now the Canary Islands. Ferro, the westernmost of these, is still sometimes found as the Prime Meridian in German maps.]

[Footnote 204: Thus the north supplies not only inscriptions relating to its own legion (the Sixth), but no fewer than 32 of the Second, and 22 of the Twentieth; while at London and Bath indications of all three are found.]

[Footnote 205: The Latin word _castra_, originally meaning "camp," came (in Britain) to signify a fortified town, and was adopted into the various dialects of English as _caster, Chester_, or _cester_; the first being the distinctively N. Eastern, the last the S. Western form.]

[Footnote 206: Amongst these, however, must be named the high authority of Professor Skeat. See 'Cambs. Place-Names.']

[Footnote 207: Pearson's 'Historical Maps of England' gives a complete list of these.]

[Footnote 208: This industry flourished throughout the last half of the 19th century. The "coprolites" were phosphatic nodules found in the greensand and dug for use as manure.]

[Footnote 209: These are of bronze, with closed ends, pitted for the needle as now, but of size for wearing upon the _thumb_.]

[Footnote 210: There seems no valid reason for doubting that the horseshoes found associated with Roman pottery, etc., in the ashpits of the Cam valley, Dorchester, etc., are actually of Romano-British date. Gesner maintains that our method of shoeing horses was introduced by Vegetius under Valentinian II. The earlier shoes seem to have been rather such slippers as are now used by horses drawing mowing-machines on college lawns. They were sometimes of rope: _Solea sparta pes bovis induitur_ (Columella), sometimes of iron: _Et supinam animam gravido derelinquere caeno Ferream ut solam tenaci in voragine mula_ (Catullus, xvii. 25). Even gold was used: _Poppaea jumentis suis soleas ex auro induebat_ (Suet., 'Nero,' xxx.). The Romano-British horseshoes are thin broad bands of iron, fastened on by three nails, and without heels. See also Beckmann's 'History of Inventions' (ed. Bohn).]

[Footnote 211: This is true of the whole of Britain, even along the Wall, as a glance at the cases in the British Museum will show. There may be seen the most interesting relic of this class yet discovered, a bronze shield-boss, dredged out of the Tyne in 1893 [see 'Lapid. Sept.' p. 58], bearing the name of the owner, Junius Dubitatus, and his Centurion, Julius Magnus, of the Ninth Legion.]

[Footnote 212: The wall of London is demonstrably later than the town, old material being found built into it. So is that of Silchester.]

[Footnote 213: York was not three miles in circumference, Uriconium the same, Cirencester and Lincoln about two, Silchester and Bath somewhat smaller.]

[Footnote 214: Roman milestones have been found in various places, amongst the latest and most interesting being one of Carausius discovered in 1895, at Carlisle. It had been reversed to substitute the name of Constantius (see p. 222.). It may be noted that the earliest of post-Roman date are those still existing on the road between Cambridge and London, set up in 1729.]

[Footnote 215: See p. 117. When the existing bridge was built, Roman remains were found in the river-bed.]

[Footnote 216: The Thames to the south, the Fleet to the west, and the Wall Brook to the east and north.]

[Footnote 217: See p. 233. The city wall may well be due to him.]

[Footnote 218: See p. 233.]

[Footnote 219: On this functionary, see article by Domaszewski in the 'Rheinisches Review,' 1891. His appointment was part of the pacificatory system promoted by Agricola.]

[Footnote 220: An _archigubernus_ (master pilot) of this fleet left his property to one of his subordinates in trust for his infant son. The son died before coming of age, whereupon the estate was claimed by the next of kin, while the trustee contended that it had now passed to him absolutely. He was upheld by the Court. Another York decision established the principle that any money made by a slave belonged to his _bonâ fide_ owner. And another settled that a _Decurio_ (a functionary answering to a village Mayor in France) was responsible only for his own _Curia_.]

[Footnote 221: Inscriptions of the Twentieth have been found here.]

[Footnote 222: _Legra-ceaster_, the earliest known form of the name, signifies Camp-chester _(Legra = Laager)_. In Anglo-Saxon writings the name is often applied to Chester. This, however, was _the_ Chester, _par excellence_, as having remained so long unoccupied. In the days of Alfred it is still a "waste Chester" in the A.S. Chronicle. The word _Chester_ is only associated with Roman fortifications in Southern Britain. But north of the wall, as Mr. Haverfield points out, we find it applied to earthworks which cannot possibly have ever been Roman. (See 'Antiquary' for 1895, p. 37.)]

[Footnote 223: Bath was frequented by Romano-British society for its medicinal waters, as it has been since. The name _Aquae_ (like the various _Aix_ in Western Europe) records this fact. Bath was differentiated as _Aquae Solis_; the last word having less reference to Apollo the Healer, than to a local deity _Sul_ or _Sulis_. Traces of an elaborate pump-room system, including baths and cisterns still retaining their leaden lining, have here been discovered; and even the stock-in-trade of one of the small shops, where, as now at such resorts, trinkets were sold to the visitors.(See 'Antiquary,' 1895, p. 201.)]

[Footnote 224: Similar excavations are in progress at Caergwent, but, as yet, with less interesting results. Amongst the objects found is a money-box of pottery, with a slit for the coins. A theatre [?] is now (1903) being uncovered.]

[Footnote 225: See II. F. 4; also Mr. Haverfield's articles in the 'Athenaeum' (115, Dec. 1894), and in the 'Antiquary' (1899, p. 71).]

[Footnote 226: Mr. Haverfield notes ('Antiquary,' 1898, p. 235) that British basilicas are larger than those on the Continent, probably because more protection from weather was here necessary. Almost as large as this basilica must have been that at Lincoln, where sections of the curious multiple pillars (which perhaps suggested to St. Hugh the development from Norman to Gothic in English architecture) may be seen studding the concrete pavement of Ball Gate.]

[Footnote 227: A plan of this "church" is given by Mr. Haverfield in the 'English Hist. Review,' July 1896.]

[Footnote 228: An inspection of the Ordnance Map (1 in.) shows this clearly. It is the road called (near Andover) the _Port Way_.]

[Footnote 229: See p. 46.]

[Footnote 230: The water supply of Silchester seems to have been wholly derived from these wells, which are from 25 to 30 feet in depth, and were usually lined with wood. In one of them there were found (in 1900) stones of various fruit trees (cherry, plum, etc.), the introduction of which into Britain has long been attributed to the Romans, (See Earle, 'English Plant Names.') But this find is not beyond suspicion of being merely a mouse's hoard of recent date.]

[Footnote 231: Roman refineries for extracting silver existed in the lead-mining districts both of the Mendips and of Derbyshire, which were worked continuously throughout the occupation. But the Silchester plant was adapted for dealing with far more refractory ores; for what purpose we cannot tell.]

[Footnote 232: See paper by W. Gowland in Silchester Report (Society of Antiquaries) for 1899.]

[Footnote 233: A glance at the maps issued by the Society of Antiquaries will show this. The massive rampart, forming an irregular hexagon, cuts off the corners of various blocks in the ground plan.]

[Footnote 234: The well-known Cambridge jug of Messrs. Hattersley is a typical example.]

[Footnote 235: "Samian" factories existed in Gaul.]

[Footnote 236: See p. 43.]

[Footnote 237: TI. CLAVDIVS CAESAR AVG. P.M. TRIB. P. VIIII. IMP, XVI. DE BRITAN. This was found at Wokey Hole, near Wells.]

[Footnote 238: Haverfield, 'Ant.' p. 147.]

[Footnote 239: See 'Corpus Inscript. Lat.' Vol. VII.]

[Footnote 240: A specially interesting touch of this old country house life is to be seen in the Corinium Museum at Cirencester--a mural painting whereon has been scratched a squared word (the only known classical example of this amusement):

ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR]

[Footnote 241: The word _mansio_, however, at this period signified merely a posting-station on one or other of the great roads.]

[Footnote 242: Selwood, Sherwood, Needwood, Charnwood, and Epping Forest are all shrunken relics of these wide-stretching woodlands, with which most of the hill ranges seem to have been clothed. See Pearson's 'Historical Maps of England.']

[Footnote 243: Classical authorities only speak of bears in Scotland. See P. 236.]

[Footnote 244: Cyneget., I. 468.]

[Footnote 245: _Ibid_. 69.]

[Footnote 246: In II. Cons. Stilicho, III. 299: _Magnaque taurorum fracturae colla Britannae_.]

[Footnote 247: 'Origins of English History,' p. 294.]

[Footnote 248: A brooch found at Silchester also represents this dog.]

[Footnote 249: Symmachus (A.D. 390) represents them as so fierce as to require iron kennels (Ep. II. 77).]

[Footnote 250: Prudentius (contra Sab. 39): _Semifer, et Scoto sentit cane milite pejor_.]

[Footnote 251: Proleg. to Jeremiah, lib. III.]

[Footnote 252: Flavius Vopiscus (A.D. 300) tells us that vine-growing was also attempted, by special permission of the Emperor Probus.]

[Footnote 253: The Lex Julia forbade the carrying of arms by civilians.]

[Footnote 254: See Elton's 'Origins,' p. 347.]

[Footnote 255: Proem, v.]

[Footnote 256: See Fronto,'De Bello Parthico', I. 217. The latest known inscription relating to this Legion is of A.D. 109 [C.I.L. vii. 241].]

[Footnote 257: Spartianus (A.D. 300), 'Hist. Rom.']

[Footnote 258: About a fifth of the known legionary inscriptions of Britain have been found in Scotland.]

[Footnote 259: See p. 233.]

[Footnote 260: At the Battle of the Standard, 1138.]

[Footnote 261: That Hadrian and not Severus (by whose name it is often called) was the builder of the Wall as well as of the adjoining fortresses is proved by his inscriptions being found not only in them, but in the "mile-castles" [see C.I.L. vii. 660-663]. Out of the 14 known British inscriptions of this Emperor, 8 are on the Wall; out of the 57 of Severus, 3 only.]

[Footnote 262: Hadrian divided the Province of Britain [see p. 142] into "Upper" and "Lower"; but by what boundary is wholly conjectural. All we know is that Dion Cassius [Xiph. lv.] places Chester and Caerleon in the former and York in the latter. The boundary _may_ thus have been the line from Mersey to Humber; "Upper" meaning "nearer to Rome."]

[Footnote 263: Neilson, 'Per Lineam Valli,' p.I.]

[Footnote 264: See further pp. 203-212.]

[Footnote 265: The figure has been supposed to represent Rome seated on Britain. But the shield is not the oblong buckler of the Romans, but a round barbaric target.]

[Footnote 266: So Tacitus speaks of "_Submotis velut in aliam insulam hostibus_" by Agricola's rampart. And Pliny says, "_Alpes Gcrmaniam ab Italia submovent_."]

[Footnote 267: Corpus Inscript. Lat, vii. 1125.]

[Footnote 268: Dio Cassius, lxxii. 8.]

[Footnote 269: Aelius Lampridius, 'De Commodo,' c. 8.]

[Footnote 270: Inscriptions in the Newcastle Museum show that bargemen from the Tigris were quartered on the Tyne.]

[Footnote 271: Dio Cassius, lxxii. 9.]

[Footnote 272: Julius Capitolinus, 'Pertinax,' c. 3.]

[Footnote 273: Orosius, 'Hist' 17.]

[Footnote 274: Herodian, 'Hist.' iii. 20.]

[Footnote 275: Lucius Septimus Severus.]

[Footnote 276: Herodian, 'Hist. III.' 46. He is a contemporary authority.]

[Footnote 277: Also called Bassianus. His throne name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius.]

[Footnote 278: Publius Septimus Geta Antoninus Pius.]

[Footnote 279: Aelius Spartianus, 'Severus,' c. 23.]

[Footnote 280: Dion Cassius, lxxvi. 12.]

[Footnote 281: Severus gave as a _mot d'ordre_ to his soldiers the "No quarter" proclamation of Agamemnon. ('Iliad,' vi. 57): [Greek: _ton mêtis hupekphugoi aipun olethron_].]

[Footnote 282: Dion Cassius, lxxvi. 12.]

[Footnote 283: See p. 195.]

[Footnote 284: Aurelius Victor (20) makes him (as Mommsen and others think) restore _Antonine's_ rampart: "_vallum per_ xxxii. _passuum millia a mari ad mare_." But more probably xxxii. is a misreading for lxxii.]

[Footnote 285: The very latest spade-work on the Wall (undertaken by Messrs. Haverfield and Bosanquet in 1901) shows that the original wall and ditch ran through the midst of the great fortresses of Chesters and Birdoswald, which are now astride, so to speak, of the Wall; pointing to the conclusion that Severus rebuilt and enlarged them. In various places along the Wall itself the stones bear traces of mortar on their exterior face, showing that they have been used in some earlier work.]

[Footnote 286: This is the number _per lineam valli_ given in the 'Notitia.' Only twelve have been certainly identified. They are commonly known as "stations."]

[Footnote 287: Antiquaries have given these structures the name of "mile-castles." They are usually some fifty feet square.]

[Footnote 288: The familiar name of "Wallsend" coals reminds us of this connection between the Tynemouth colliery district and the Wall's end.]

[Footnote 289: So puzzling is the situation that high authorities on the subject are found to contend that the work was perfunctorily thrown up, in obedience to mistaken orders issued by the departmental stupidity of the Roman War Office, that in reality it was never either needed or used, and was obsolete from the very outset. But this suggestion can scarcely be taken as more than an elaborate confession of inability to solve the _nodus_.]

[Footnote 290: It should be noted that the "Vallum" is no regular Roman _muris caespitius_ like the Rampart of Antoninus, though traces have been found here and there along the line of some intention to construct such a work (see 'Antiquary,' 1899, p. 71).]

[Footnote 291: In more than one place the line of fortification swerves from its course to sweep round a station.]

[Footnote 292: Near Cilurnum the fosse was used as a receptacle for shooting the rubbish of the station, and contains Roman pottery of quite early date.]

[Footnote 293: See p. 233.]

[Footnote 294: See p. 232.]

[Footnote 295: The existing military road along the line of the Wall does not follow the track of its Roman predecessor. It was constructed after the rebellion of 1745, when the Scots were able to invade England by Carlisle before our very superior forces at Newcastle could get across the pathless waste between to intercept them.]

[Footnote 296: Mithraism is first heard of in the 2nd century A.D., as an eccentric cult having many of the features of Christianity, especially the sense of Sin and the doctrine that the vicarious blood-shedding essential to remission must be connected with a New Baptismal Birth unto Righteousness. The Mithraists carried out this idea by the highly realistic ceremonies of the _Taurobolium_; the penitent neophyte standing beneath a grating on which the victim was slain, and thus being literally bathed in the atoning blood, afterwards being considered as born again [_renatus_]. It thus evolved a real and heartfelt devotion to the Supreme Being, whom, however (unlike Christianity), it was willing to worship under the names of the old Pagan Deities; frequently combining their various attributes in joint Personalities of unlimited complexity. One figure has the head of Jupiter, the rays of Phoebus, and the trident of Neptune; another is furnished with the wings of Cupid, the wand of Mercury, the club of Hercules, and the spear of Mars; and so forth. Mithraism thus escaped the persecution which the essential exclusiveness of their Faith drew down upon Christians; gradually transforming by its deeper spirituality the more frigid cults of earlier Paganism, and making them its own. The little band of truly noble men and women who in the latter half of the 4th century made the last stand against the triumph of Christianity over the Roman world were almost all Mithraists. For a good sketch of this interesting development see Dill, 'Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire.']

[Footnote 297: Of the 1200 in the 'Corpus Inscript. Lat.' (vol. vii.), 500 are in the section _Per Lineam Valli_.]

[Footnote 298: 'Corpus Inscript. Lat.' vol. vii., No. 759.]

[Footnote 299: Some authorities consider him to have been her own son.]

[Footnote 300: See p. 126.]

[Footnote 301: The Gelt is a small tributary joining the Irthing shortly before the latter falls into the Eden.]

[Footnote 302: Polybius (vi. 24) tells us that in the Roman army of his day a _vexillum_ or _manipulum_ consisted of 200 men under two centurions, each of whom had his _optio_. Vegetius (II. 1) confines the word _vexillatio_ to the cavalry, but gives no clue as to its strength.]

[Footnote 303: On this inscription see Huebner, C.I.L. vii. 1. A drawing will be found in Bruce's 'Handbook to the Wall' (ed. 1895), p. 23.]

[Footnote 304: The name _Cilurnum_ may be connected with this wealth of water. In modern Welsh _celurn_ = caldron.]

[Footnote 305: "All hast thou won, all hast thou been. Now be God the winner." (These final words are equivocal, in both Latin and English. They might signify, "Now let God be your conqueror," and "Now, thou conqueror, be God," _i. e_. "die"; for a Roman Emperor was deified at his decease.) Spartianus, 'De Severo,' 22.]

[Footnote 306: Aelius Spartianus, 'Severus,' c. 22.]

[Footnote 307: See p. 46.]

[Footnote 308: Dio Cassius, lxxvi. 16.]

[Footnote 309: _Ibid_. lxxvii. I.]

[Footnote 310: In 369. See p. 230.]

[Footnote 311: Constans in 343. See p. 230.]

[Footnote 312: See Bruce, 'Handbook to Wall' (ed. 1895), p. 267.]

[Footnote 313: Such tablets, called _tabulae honestae missionis_ ("certificates of honourable discharge"), were given to every enfranchised veteran, and were small enough to be carried easily on the person. Four others, besides that at Cilurnum, have been found in Britain.]

[Footnote 314: None of the above-mentioned _tabulae_ found are later than A.D. 146, which, so far as it goes, supports the contention that Marcus Aurelius was the real extender of the citizenship; Caracalla merely insisting on the liabilities which every Roman subject had incurred by his rise to this status.]

[Footnote 315: See pp. 175, 176. Only those fairly identifiable are given; the certain in capitals, the highly probable in ordinary type, and the reasonably probable in italics. For a full list of Romano-British place-names, see Pearson, 'Historical Maps of England.']

[Footnote 316: Probus was fond of thus dealing with his captives. He settled certain Franks on the Black Sea, where they seized shipping and sailed triumphantly back to the Rhine, raiding on their way the shores of Asia Minor, Greece, and Africa, and even storming Syracuse. They ultimately took service under Carausius. [See Eumenius, Panegyric on Constantius.] The Vandals he had captured on the Rhine, after their great defeat by Aurelius on the Danube.]

[Footnote 317: This name may also echo some tradition of barbarians from afar having camped there.]

[Footnote 318: Eutropius (A.D. 360), 'Breviarium,' x. 21.]

[Footnote 319: By the analogy of Saxon and of Lombard (_Lango-bardi_ = "Long-spears"), this seems the most probable original derivation of the name. In later ages it was, doubtless, supposed to have to do with _frank_ = free. The franca is described by Procopius ('De Bell. Goth.' ii. 25.), and figures in the Song of Maldon.]

[Footnote 320: See Florence of Worcester (A.D. 1138); also the Song of Beowulf.]

[Footnote 321: Eutropius, ix. 21.]

[Footnote 322: The Franks of Carausius had already swept that sea (see p. 219).]

[Footnote 323: Mamertinus, 'Paneg. in Maximian.']

[Footnote 324: Caesar, originally a mere family name, was adapted first as an Imperial title by the Flavian Emperors.]

[Footnote 325: Henry of Huntingdon makes her the daughter of Coel, King of Colchester; the "old King Cole" of our nursery rhyme, and as mythical as other eponymous heroes. Bede calls her a concubine, a slur derived from Eutropius (A.D. 360), who calls the connection _obscurius matrimonium_ (Brev. x. 1).]

[Footnote 326: Eumenius, 'Panegyric on Constantine,' c. 8.]

[Footnote 327: Eumenius, 'Panegyric on Constantius,' c. 6.]

[Footnote 328: Salisbury Plain has been suggested as the field.]

[Footnote 329: The historian Victor, writing about 360 A.D., ascribes the recovery of Britain to this officer rather than to the personal efforts of Constantius. The suggestion in the text is an endeavour to reconcile his statement with the earlier panegyrics of Eumenius.]

[Footnote 330: See p. 59. An inscription found near Cirencester proves that place to have been in Britannia Prima. It is figured by Haverfield ('Eng. Hist. Rev.' July 1896), and runs as follows: _Septimius renovat Primae Provinciae Rector Signum et erectam prisca religione columnam_. This is meant for two hexameter lines, and refers to Julian's revival of Paganism (see p. 233).]

[Footnote 331: Specimens of these are given by Harnack in the 'Theologische Literaturzeitung' of January 20 and March 17, 1894.]

[Footnote 332: See Sozomen, 'Hist. Eccl.' I, 6.]

[Footnote 333: See p. 123.]

[Footnote 334: The name commonly given to the really unknown author of the 'History of the Britons.' He states that the tombstone of Constantius was still to be seen in his day, and gives Mirmantum or Miniamantum as an alternative name for Segontium. Bangor and Silchester are rival claimants for the name, and one 13th-century MS. declares York to be signified.]

[Footnote 335: The Sacred Monogram known as _Labarum_. Both name and emblem were very possibly adapted from the primitive cult of the Labrys, or Double Axe, filtered through Mithraism. The figure is never found as a Christian emblem before Constantine, though it appears as a Heathen symbol upon the coinage of Decius (A.D. 250). See Parsons, 'Non-Christian Cross,' p. 148.]

[Footnote 336: Hilary (A.D. 358), 'De Synodis,' § 2.]

[Footnote 337: Ammianus Marcellinus, 'Hist.' XX. I.]

[Footnote 338: Jerome calls her "fertilis tyrannorum provincia." ['Ad Ctesiph.' xliii.] It is noteworthy that in all ecclesiastical notices of this period Britain is always spoken of as a single province, in spite of Diocletian's reforms.]

[Footnote 339: See p. 202.]

[Footnote 340: These Scotch pirate craft (as it would seem) are described by Vegetius (A.D. 380) as skiffs (_scaphae_), which, the better to escape observation, were painted a neutral tint all over, ropes and all, and were thus known as _Picts_. The crews were dressed in the same colour--like our present khaki. These vessels were large open boats rowing twenty oars a side, and also used sails. The very scientifically constructed vessels which have been found in the silt of the Clyde estuary may have been _Picts_. See p. 80.]

[Footnote 341: Henry of Huntingdon, 'History of the English,' ii. I.]

[Footnote 342: Murat, CCLXIII. 4.]

[Footnote 343: See p. 225.]

[Footnote 344: Jerome, in his treatise against Jovian, declares that he could bear personal testimony to this.]

[Footnote 345: See p. 194.]

[Footnote 346: Marcellinus dwells upon the chopping seas which usually prevailed in the Straits; and of the rapid tide, which is also referred to by Ausonius (380), "Quum virides algas et rubra corallia nudat Aestus," etc.]

[Footnote 347: To him is probably due the reconstruction of the "Vallum" as a defence against attacks from the south, such as the Scots were now able to deliver. See p. 207.]

[Footnote 348: Marcellinus, 'Hist.' XXVIII. 3. See p. 202.]

[Footnote 349: 'De Quarto Consulatu Honorii,' I. 31.]

[Footnote 350: Theodosius married Galla, daughter of Valentinian I.]

[Footnote 351: For the later migrations to Brittany see Elton's 'Origins,' p. 350. Samson, Archbishop of York, is said to have fled thither in 500, and settled at Dol. Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of Britons settled by the Loire.]

[Footnote 352: 'In Primum Consulatum Stilichonis,' II. 247.]

[Footnote 353: Alone amongst the legions it is not mentioned in the 'Notitia' as attached to any province.]

[Footnote 354: 'Epithalamium Paladii,' 85.]

[Footnote 355: The first printed edition was published 1552.]

[Footnote 356: See p. 90.]

[Footnote 357: _Portus Adurni_. Some authorities, however, hold this to be Shoreham, others Portsmouth, others Aldrington. The remaining posts are less disputed. They were Branodunum (Brancaster), Garianonum (Yarmouth), Othona (Althorne[?] in Essex), Regulbium (Reculver), Rutupiae (Richborough), Lemanni (Lyminge), Dubris (Dover), and Anderida.]

[Footnote 358: There were six "Counts" altogether in the Western Empire, and twelve "Dukes." Both Counts and Dukes were of "Respectable" rank, the second in the Diocletian hierarchy.]

[Footnote 359: See p. 237.]

[Footnote 360: This word, however, may perhaps signify _Imperial_ rather than _London_.]

[Footnote 361: Olympiodorus (A.D. 425).]

[Footnote 362: 'Hist. Nov.' vi. 10. He is a contemporary authority.]

[Footnote 363: Tennyson, 'Guinevere,' 594. The dragon standard first came into use amongst the Imperial insignia under Augustus, and the red dragon is mentioned by Nennius as already the emblem of Briton as opposed to Saxon. The mediaeval Welsh poems speak of the legendary Uther, father of Arthur, as "Pendragon," equivalent to Head-Prince, of Britain.]

[Footnote 364: See Rhys, 'Celtic Britain,' pp. 116, 136.]

[Footnote 365: Gildas (xxiii,) so calls him.]

[Footnote 366: "The groans of the Britons" are said by Bede to have been forwarded to Aetius "thrice Consul," _i.e._ in 446, on the eve of the great struggle with Attila.]

[Footnote 367: Nennius (xxviii.) so calls them, and they are commonly supposed to have been clinker-built like the later Viking ships. But Sidonius Apollinaris (455) speaks of them as a kind of coracle. See p. 37.

"Quin et Armorici piratam Saxona tractus Sperabant, cui _pelle_ salum sulcare Britannum Ludus, et _assuto_ glaucum mare findere lembo."

('Carm.' vii. 86.)]

[Footnote 368: See Elton, 'Origins,' ch. xii.]

[Footnote 369: Henry of Huntingdon, 'Hist. of the English,' ii. 1.]

[Footnote 370: Nennius, xlix. This is the reading of the oldest MSS.; others are _Nimader sexa_ and _Enimith saxas_. The regular form would be _Nimap eowre seaxas_.]

[Footnote 371: A coin of Valentinian was discovered in the Cam valley in 1890. On the reverse is a Latin Cross surrounded by a laurel wreath.]

[Footnote 372: _Cymry_ signifies _confederate_, and was the name (quite probably an older racial appellation revived) adopted by the Western Britons in their resistance to the Saxon advance.]

[Footnote 373: Arthur is first mentioned (in Nennius and the 'Life of Gildas') as a Damnonian "tyrant" (i.e. a popular leader with no constitutional status), fighting against "the kings of Kent." This notice must be very early--before the West Saxons came in between Devon and the Kentish Jutes. His early date is confirmed by his mythical exploits being located in every Cymric region--Cornwall, Wales, Strathclyde, and even Brittany.]

[Footnote 374: The ambition of Henry V. for Continental dominion was undoubtedly thus quickened.]

[Footnote 375: Procopius, 'De Bello Gothico,' iv. 20.]

[Footnote 376: These presumably represent the Saxons, who were next-door neighbours to the Frisians of Holland. But Mr. Haverfield's latest (1902) map makes Frisians by name occupy Lothian.]

[Footnote 377: Ptolemy's map shows how this error arose; Scotland, by some extraordinary blunder, being therein represented as an _eastward_ extension at right angles to England, with the Mull of Galloway as its northernmost point.]

[Footnote 378: This fable probably arose from the mythical visit of Ulysses (see p. 64 _n_.), who, as Claudian ('In Rut.' i. 123) tells, here found the Mouth of Hades.]

[Footnote 379: Procopius, 'De Bello Gothico,' ii. 6.]

[Footnote 380: See my 'Alfred in the Chroniclers,' p. 6.]

[Footnote 381: See p. 175.]

[Footnote 382: See p. 168.]

[Footnote 383: 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,' A. 491: "This year Ella and Cissa stormed Anderida and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not one Briton was there left."]

[Footnote 384: Chester itself, one of the last cities to fall, is called "a waste chester" as late as the days of Alfred ('A.-S. Chron.,' A. 894).]

[Footnote 385: In the districts conquered after the Conversion of the English there was no such extermination, the vanquished Britons being fellow-Christians.]

[Footnote 386: For the British survival in the Fenland see my 'History of Cambs.,' III., § 11.]

[Footnote 387: Romano-British relics have been found in the Victoria Cave, Settle.]

[Footnote 388: 'Comm. on Ps. CXVI.' written about 420 A.D.]

[Footnote 389: 'Epist. ad. Corinth.' 5.]

[Footnote 390: Catullus, in the Augustan Age, refers to Britain as the "extremam Occidentis," and Aristides (A.D. 160) speaks of it as "that great island opposite Iberia."]

[Footnote 391: 'Menol. Graec.,' June 29. A suspiciously similar passage (on March 15) speaks of British ordinations by Aristobulus, the disciple of St. Paul.]

[Footnote 392: Nero. This would be A.D. 66.]

[Footnote 393: It is less generally known than it should be that the head of St. Paul as well as of St. Peter has always figured on the leaden seal attached to a Papal Bull.]

[Footnote 394: Tennyson, 'Holy Grail,' 53. This thorn, a patriarchal tree of vast dimensions, was destroyed during the Reformation. But many of its descendants exist about England (propagated from cuttings brought by pilgrims), and still retain its unique season for flowering. In all other respects they are indistinguishable from common thorns.]

[Footnote 395: See also William of Malmesbury, 'Hist. Regum,' § 20.]

[Footnote 396: See p. 62.]

[Footnote 397: See Introduction to Tennyson's 'Holy Grail' (G.C. Macaulay), p. xxix.]

[Footnote 398: See Bp. Browne, 'Church before Augustine,' p. 46.]

[Footnote 399: Chaucer, 'Sumpnour's Tale.']

[Footnote 400: Epig. xi. 54: "Claudia coeruleis ... Rufina Britannis Edita."]

[Footnote 401: See p. 141.]

[Footnote 402: Epig. v. 13.]

[Footnote 403: Tacitus, 'Ann.' xiii. 32.]

[Footnote 404: See p. 69.]

[Footnote 405: Lanciani, 'Pagan and Christian Rome,' p. 110. The house was bought by Pudens from Aquila and Priscilla, and made a titular church by Pius I.]

[Footnote 406: Homily 4 on Ezechiel, 6 on St. Luke.]

[Footnote 407: 'Adversus Judaeos,' c. 7.]

[Footnote 408: 'Eccl. Hist.' iv.]

[Footnote 409: Pope from 177-191.]

[Footnote 410: Haddan and Stubbs, i. 25. The 'Catalogus' was composed early in the 4th century, but the incident is a later insertion.]

[Footnote 411: See p. 225.]

[Footnote 412: He is mentioned by Gildas, along with Julius and Aaron of Caerleon. These last were already locally canonized in the 9th century, as the 'Liber Landavensis' testifies; and the sites of their respective churches could still be traced, according to Bishop Godwin, in the 17th century.]

[Footnote 413: Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelfius of "Colonia Londinensium." The last word is an obvious misreading. Haddan and Stubbs ('Concilia,' p. 7) suggest _Legionensium_, i.e. Caerleon.]

[Footnote 414: It is more reasonable to assume this than to imagine, with Mr. French, that these three formed the entire British episcopate. And there is reason to suppose that York, London, and Caerleon were metropolitan sees.]

[Footnote 415: Canon x.: De his qui conjuges suas in adulterio deprehendunt, et iidem sunt fideles, et prohibentur nubere; Placuit ... ne viventibus uxoribus suis, licet adulteris, alias accipiant. [Haddan, 'Concilia,' p. 7.]]

[Footnote 416: 'Ad Jovian' (A.D. 363).]

[Footnote 417: 'Contra Judaeos' (A.D. 387).]

[Footnote 418: 'Serm. de Util. Lect. Script.']

[Footnote 419: Hom. xxviii., in II. Corinth.]

[Footnote 420: This text seems from very early days to have been a sort of Christian watchword (being, as it were, an epitome of the Faith). The Coronation Oath of our English Kings is still, by ancient precedent, administered on this passage, _i.e._ the Book is opened for the King's kiss at this point. In mediaeval romance we find the words considered a charm against ghostly foes; and to this day the text is in use as a phylactery amongst the peasantry of Ireland.]

[Footnote 421: Ep. xlix. ad Paulinum. These pilgrimages are also mentioned by Palladius (420) and Theodoret (423).]

[Footnote 422: Ep. lxxxiv. ad Oceanum.]

[Footnote 423: Ep. ci. ad Evang.]

[Footnote 424: Whithern (in Latin _Casa Candida_) probably derived its name from the white rough-casting with which the dark stone walls of this church were covered, a strange sight to Pictish eyes, accustomed only to wooden buildings.]

[Footnote 425: The practice, now so general, of dedicating a church to a saint unconnected with the locality, was already current at Rome. But hitherto Britain had retained the more primitive habit, by which (if a church was associated with any particular name) it was called after the saint who first built or used it, or, like St. Alban's, the martyr who suffered on the spot. Besides Whithern, the church of Canterbury was dedicated about this time to St. Martin, showing the close ecclesiastical sympathy between Gaul and Britain.]

[Footnote 426: The cave is on the northern shore of the Thuner-See, near Sundlauenen. Beatus is said to have introduced sailing into the Oberland by spreading his mantle to the steady breeze which blows down the lake by night and up it during the day. The name of Justus is preserved in the Justis-thal near Merlingen.]

[Footnote 427: This name is merely the familiar Welsh _Morgan_, which signifies _sea-born_, done into Greek.]

[Footnote 428: See Orosius, 'De Arbit. Lib.,' and other authorities in Haddan and Stubbs.]

[Footnote 429: Sidonius, Ep. ix. 3.]

[Footnote 430: Constantius, the biographer of Germanus, says they were sent by a Council of Gallican Bishops; but Prosper of Aquitaine (who was in Rome at the time) declares they were commissioned by Pope Celestine. Both statements are probably true.]

[Footnote 431: The lives of Germanus, Patrick, and Ninias will be found in a trustworthy and well-told form in Miss Arnold-Foster's 'Studies in Church Dedication.']

[Footnote 432: See p. 185.]

[Footnote 433: Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' I. xxvi.]

[Footnote 434: Many existing churches are more or less built of Roman material. The tower of St. Albans is a notable example, and that of Stoke-by-Nayland, near Colchester. At Lyminge, near Folkestone, so much of the church is thus constructed that many antiquaries have believed it to be a veritable Roman edifice.]

[Footnote 435: See Lanciani, 'Pagan and Christian Rome,' p. 115.]

[Footnote 436: At Frampton, near Dorchester, and Chedworth, near Cirencester, stones bearing the Sacred Monogram have been found amongst the ruins of Roman "villas."]

[Footnote 437: The British rite was founded chiefly on the Gallican, and differed from the Roman in the mode of administering baptism, in certain minutiae of the Mass, in making Wednesday as well as Friday a weekly fast, in the shape of the sacerdotal tonsure, in the Kalendar (especially with regard to the calculation of Easter), and in the recitation of the Psalter. From Canon XVI. of the Council of Cloveshoo (749) it appears that the observance of the Rogation Days constituted another difference.]

[Footnote 438: The Mission of St. Columba the Irishman to Britain was a direct result of the Mission of St. Patrick the Briton to Ireland.]

[Footnote 439: Magna Charta opens with the words _Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit_; and the Barons who won it called themselves "The Army of the Church."]