Part 4

It is maintained by some antiquaries that London is almost of Roman origin. In the "Conquest of Britain," by Claudius, A.D. 44, "the first care of the Romans was, to make good military communication across the north of Essex, and the tenure of London was then a matter of minor importance. It is remarkable that, though the bridge over the Thames is mentioned, there is no allusion to a city. It is not improbable that the Romans, perceiving the advantage of the position at the head of the estuary and at the mouth of a large river, and having the power (after the occupation of both banks of the Thames) of giving it better military protection than the native tribes, continually in conflict, could ever give it, promoted the commercial growth of the city by all means in their power. Thus it would seem that London, almost from its origin, is a Roman city."

In the revolt of the Britons, A.D. 61, Londinium (London), already, according to Tacitus, "famed for the vast conflux of traders, and her abundant commerce and plenty," was destroyed by the Britons.

London has hitherto yielded up many traces of the manners and indications of our Roman ancestors, but few of our earliest antiquities. Our Roman London has been buried beneath the foundations of the modern city, or rather beneath the ruins of a city several times destroyed, and as often rebuilt. It is only at rare intervals that excavators strike down upon the venerable remains of the earliest occupation; and huge masses of genuine Roman fortifications have been seen in our day, but by few persons in comparison with the busy multitudes which daily throng our streets.

When the Roman legions were finally withdrawn, Britain possessed more than fifty walled towns, united by roads with stations upon them; there were also numerous military walled stations. These towns and stations possessed public buildings, baths, and temples, and edifices of considerable grandeur and architectural importance, and their public places were often embellished with statues: one bronze equestrian statue, at least, decorated Lincoln; a bronze statue stood in a temple at Bath; one of the temples at Colchester bore an inscription in large letters of bronze; and Verulam possessed a theatre for dramatic representations, capable of holding some 2,000 or 3,000 spectators. Verulam now presents nothing to the eye but some fields, a church, and a dwelling-house, surrounded by walls overgrown with trees. Colchester, Lincoln, and Bath exhibit few indications of their Roman times; but Chester is richer in these characteristics. The spacious villas which once spread over Roman Britain, are now known to us as from time to time their splendid pavements are laid open under corn-fields and meadows. In a nook of the busy Strand is a Roman bath, of accredited antiquity, its bricks and stucco corresponding with those in the City wall: this bath can be traced to have belonged to the villa of a Leicestershire family, which stood upon this spot,--the north bank of the Thames.

In the year 1864, there was discovered on the site of the portico of the East India-house, in Leadenhall-street, the remains of a Roman room, _in situ_ 19 ft. 6 in. below the present surface of the street, and 6 ft. below the lowest foundations of the India-house. The room was about 16 ft. square; the walls built of Roman bricks and rubble; the floor paved with good red tesseræ, but without any ornamental pattern; the walls plastered and coloured in fresco of an agreeable tint, and decorated with red lines and bands. This was a small room, attached to the _atrium_ of a large house, of which near the same spot a large and highly ornamented pavement was found in 1804; the central portion of this pavement is now preserved in the Indian Museum at Whitehall. This was the most magnificent Roman tesselated pavement yet found in London. It lay at only 9-1/2 ft. below the street, and appeared to have been the floor of a room 20 ft. square. In the centre was a Bacchus upon a tiger, encircled with three borders (inflections of serpents, cornucopiæ, and squares diagonally concave), and drinking-cups and plants at the angles. Surrounding the whole was a square border of a bandeau of oak, and lozenge figures, and true lovers' knots, and a 5 ft. outer margin of plain red tiles.

Mr. Roach Smith has shown, in his admirable _Illustrations of Roman London_ (the originals now in the British Museum), that the area and dimensions of the Roman city may be mapped out from the masses of masonry forming portions of its boundaries, many of which have come to light in the progress of recent City improvements. The course of the Roman Wall is ascertainable from the position of the gates (taken down in 1760-62), from authenticated discoveries and from remains yet extant. Recent excavations have also proved that within the area thus inclosed, most of the streets of the present day run upon the remains of Roman houses; and it is confidently believed that the Romans had here a bridge across the Thames, probably a wooden roadway upon stone piers, like those of Hadrian at Newcastle, and of Trajan across the Danube. It seems to be ascertained that there was a suburb also on the southern side of the Thames (Southwark), not inclosed in walls; and that the houses constructed upon this swampy spot were built upon wooden piles, of which some remains are still in existence.

The Roman inscriptions and sculptures which have been discovered in London are very numerous. Sir Christopher Wren brought to light a monument to a soldier of the Second Legion, now among the Arundelian Marbles at Oxford. At Ludgate, behind the London Coffee-house, a monumental inscription, a female head in stone (life-size), and the trunk and thighs of a statue of Hercules, were dug up in 1806. In 1842 was found at Battle Bridge a Roman inscription, attesting the great battle between the Britons under Boadicea and the Romans under Suetonius Paulinus, to have been fought on this spot. Stamped tiles have been found in various parts of the city. A group of the _Deæ Matres_ was discovered in excavating a sewer in Hart-street, Crutched-friars, at a considerable depth, amongst the ruins of Roman buildings, and is now in the Guildhall Library. A fine sarcophagus was dug up in Haydon-square, Tower Hill; a statue of a youth in Bevis Marks; and an altar, apparently to Diana, was found under Goldsmiths' Hall. Fragments of wall-paintings have been carried away by cart-loads. Bronzes of a very high class of art have been found: a head of Hadrian, of superior workmanship, has been dredged up from the bed of the Thames; a colossal bronze head found in Thames-street; an exquisite bronze Apollo, in the Thames, in 1837; a Mercury, worthy to be its companion; the Priest of Cybele; and the Jupiter of the same date, are most important figures, and the first two worthy of any metropolis in any age. A bronze figure of Atys was also found at Barnes among gravel taken from the spot where the preceding bronzes were discovered. A bronze figure of an archer, also a beautiful work of art, was discovered in Queen-street, in 1842. An extraordinary bronze forceps, adorned with representations of the chief deities of Olympus, was also found in the Thames, whence again, in 1825, came the small silver Harpocrates, now in the British Museum.

Nowhere has the pottery of antiquity been so abundantly discovered as at London. Roman kilns were brought to light in digging the foundations of St. Paul's, in 1677; specimens of the Castor pottery have been found here; Samian ware is abundant, as have been potters' stamps which present 300 varieties, fragments of clay statuettes, terra-cotta lamps, tiles, and glass; and among the Roman glass discovered in London are several fragments of a flat and semi-transparent kind, which have every appearance of having been used as window-glass. And still more curious it is to find that specimens of a glass manufacture termed pillar-moulding, and for which Mr. James Green took out a patent, have also turned up among the _débris_ of the Roman city. Mr. Green's patent had been worked for some years under the full belief that it was a modern invention, until Mr. Apsley Pellatt recognised in the fragments evidence of the antiquity of the supposed discovery.[10] Among the personal ornaments and implements of the toilet are the gold armillæ dug up in Cheapside in 1837; the tweezers, nail-cleaners, mirrors, and strigils of the city dames of Londinium; the worn-out sandals thrown upon the dust-heaps; the sporls, spindles, fishhooks, bucket-handles, bells, balances, cocks, millstones, mortars, and other utensils which show the resources of an opulent city in the enjoyment of ancient luxury, and of the choicest appliances of ancient civilization. Of Roman coins found in London, in the bed of the Thames, Mr. Roach Smith enumerates 2,000; from gravel dredged from the Thames, 600 were picked out; a hoard of denarii of the Higher Empire was found in the city; and vast quantities were found in removing the piers of old London Bridge. In excavating for the foundations of the new Royal Exchange, in 1841, was discovered a gravel pit, supposed by Mr. Tite, the architect, to have been dug during the earliest Roman occupation of London; and then to have been a pond, gradually filled with rubbish. In it were found Roman work, stuccoed and painted; fragments of elegant Samian ware; an amphora, and terra-cotta lamps, seventeen feet below the surface; also pine-wood table-books and metal styles, sandals and soldiers' shoes, a Roman strigil, coins of Vespasian, Domitian, &c.; and almost the very footmarks of the Roman soldier.

More recently, the investigation of the ruins of the Roman city of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, has presented us with a scene for our special wonder. The earliest antiquarian report of this interesting spot will be found in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1701, where Lyster has described a Roman sudatory, or hypocaustum, discovered in Wroxeter in that year. It is strange that so important a locality should have remained unexplored during a century and a half of archæological research. The present is the first instance in which there has been in this country the chance of penetrating into a city of more than fourteen centuries ago, on so large a scale, and with such extensive remains of its former condition; where the visitor may walk over the floors which had been trodden last, before they were thus uncovered, by the Roman inhabitants of this island.

Giants are frequently associated with ruins and ancient relics in the legends of Shropshire.[11] In the history of the Fitzwarines we are given to understand that the ruined Roman city of Uriconium, which we are now exploring at Wroxeter, had been taken possession of by the giants. The city is mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy to have been standing here as early as the beginning of the second century, when it was called Viroconium, a name which appears to have been changed in the later Romano-British period to Uriconium. The line of the ancient town-wall forms an irregular oval more than three miles in circumference, on the Watling-street road, which occupies the line of one of the principal streets of the old city. The only portion of the buildings above ground is upwards of twenty feet high, seventy-two feet long, and three feet thick, and is a solid mass presenting those unmistakeable characteristics of Roman work--the long string courses of large flat red bricks. This "Old Wall" stands nearly in the centre of the ancient city, which occupied the highest ground within the walls--a commanding position, with the bold isolated form of the Wrekin in the rear, and in front a panorama of mountains formed by the Wenlock and Stretton Hills, Caer Caradoc, the Longwynd, the Breidden, and the still more distant mountains of Wales. With the exception of this wall, all the remains of the Roman city had long been buried beneath the soil, when, in February 1859, the excavation of the remains was commenced by public subscription. In one of the plundering invasions by the Picts and Scots, Uriconium is thought to have perished, towards the middle of the fifth century, by fire, and such of the inhabitants as were not massacred were dragged away into captivity. Thus the town was left an extensive mass of blackened walls; and such was the condition in which the ruined Roman towns remained during several centuries. The ruins would in time be overgrown with plants and trees, and would become the haunt of wild beasts, which were then abundant. Thus Uriconium stood ruined and deserted from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the twelfth; the level of the ground was raised by decaying floors and roofs, and vegetation; for at this time England was covered with the _débris_ of Roman ruined towns and villages standing above ground. Such ruins were frequently pillaged for building materials; and Uriconium was probably one of the great quarries from which the builders of Haughmond Abbey, and other monastic houses in this part of the country, were supplied.

The ruins were explored for treasure, and the damaged state of the floors of the Roman houses is attributed to this cause. In the excavations at Wroxeter, we see the floor sometimes perfect, and sometimes broken up; the walls of the remaining houses, to the height of two or three feet, as they were left by the mediæval builders, when they carried away the upper part of the walls for materials; the original level of the Roman town on which its inhabitants trod, strewed with roof-tiles and slates and other material which had fallen in during the conflagration under which the town sank; and the upper part of the soil mixed up with fragments of plaster and cement, bricks and mortar, which had been scattered about when the walls were broken up.

In the early excavations at Uriconium, the bottom of the Old Wall was found at fourteen feet deep; it must have been a public building; portions of the capitals, bases, and shafts of columns were found scattered about, and among other objects were a fragment of strong iron chain, the head of an axe, and pavements of fine mosaic; the building is concluded to have formed the corner of two principal streets of the Roman city. A hypocaust, of great size, was found, with a quantity of unburnt coal; and from the end wall of this hypocaust we learn the interesting fact, that the Roman houses were plastered and painted externally as well as internally; the exterior wall was painted red, with stripes of yellow. A sort of dust-bin was found filled with coins, hair-pins, fibulæ, broken pottery and glass, bones of birds and animals which had been eaten. In another hypocaust were the remains of three persons who had crept in there for concealment; near one lay a little heap of Roman coins, 132 in number, and a decomposed box or coffer. This, Mr. Wright believes, "is the first instance which has occurred in this country, in which we have had the opportunity of ascertaining what particular coins, as being then in daily circulation, an inhabitant of a Roman town in Britain, at the moment of the Roman dominion, carried about with him. The majority of these coins point to the very latest period previous to the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons as the date at which Uriconium must have been destroyed."

Three fine wide streets, paved with small round stones in the roadway, have been found in Uriconium. The Roman houses in Britain had no upper stories, and all the rooms were on the ground-floor; no traces of a staircase have ever been found; the roofing in Uriconium was slates or flags, fixed with an iron nail to the wooden framework; they lapped over each other, in lozenges or diamonds; some of the walls were tesselated in ornamental patterns; few doorways were discovered; window-glass was found one-eighth of an inch thick, though until recently it was thought that the Romans, especially in this distant province, did not use window-glass. The rooms were sometimes heated by hot air circulated in the walls, from hypocausts, and flue-tiles with holes in the sides for the escape of the air; though the hot air merely under the floor was more used, the ashes, wood and coal, and the soot of the fires were found in the hypocausts at Uriconium just as they were left when the city was overthrown and ruined by the barbarians. A large hypocaust is described with 120 columns of bricks, and is thought to have belonged to the public baths. A wide space is pointed out as the forum of Uriconium, and the basilica here holds exactly the same place as at Pompeii.

We have thus glanced at the houses of Uriconium; we now turn to their domestic articles. First is the pottery, of which the most striking is the ware of the colour of bright red sealing-wax, commonly known as Samian ware; several of the pieces found at Wroxeter have been mended, chiefly by metal rivets. There were also found specimens of the Upchurch ware, of simple ornamentation; and of the pottery from Castor, ornamented with hunting-scenes laid on a white substance after the pottery had been baked: the colour of both wares is blue, or slate-colour. Two classes of Roman pottery, both evidently made in Shropshire, were also found: the first, a white ware, consisted of elegantly formed jugs, mortaria or vessels for rubbing or pounding objects in cookery; and bowls painted red and yellow. The other Romano-Salopian pottery is a red ware, and included bowls pierced all over with small holes so as to have served for colanders. Fragments of glass vessels were found, with a ladle, several knives, a stone knife-handle, and several whetstones. Hair-pins of bone, bronze, and wood were found, with bronze fibulæ, buttons, finger-rings, bracelets, combs, bone needles, and bronze tweezers for eradicating superfluous hairs. The most curious of the miscellaneous objects is a medicine-stamp for salves or washes for the eyes, inscribed with, probably, the name of a physician resident in Uriconium. The stones with Roman inscriptions, chiefly sepulchral, are numerous. The church, a Norman edifice, at Wroxeter contains amongst other architectural and sepulchral fragments two capitals, richly ornamented, of the late period of Roman architecture which became the model of the mediæval Byzantine and Romanesque; also, a Roman _miliarium_, or mile-stone. The general result of these discoveries, is that they show the manner in which this country was inhabited and governed during nearly four centuries; we also learn, from the condition of the ruins of Uriconium, and especially from the remains of human beings which are found scattered over its long-deserted floors, the sad fate under which it finally sank into ruins; and thus we are made vividly acquainted with the character and events of a period of history which has hitherto been but dimly seen through vague tradition.[12]

Many of our Roman cities have become entirely wasted and desolate. Silchester is one of these, where corn-fields and pasture cover the spot once adorned with public and private buildings, all of which are now totally destroyed. Like the busy crowds who inhabited them, the edifices have sunk beneath the fresh and silent greensward: but the flinty wall which surrounded the city is yet firm, and the direction of the streets may be discerned by the difference of tint in the herbage; and the ploughshare turns up the medals of the Cæsars, so long dead and forgotten, who were once masters of the world.[13]

Silchester, thirty-eight acres in extent, is now being excavated, at the cost of the Duke of Wellington. Unlike other Roman sites, Silchester has never been built upon by Britons or Saxons; many beautiful mosaics have been found here, as well as more than 1,000 coins; and in July, 1866, a portion of a wall, hitherto undetected, was brought to light; and here have been found shells of the white snail, which was most extensively imported as food for the Roman soldiers.

We now approach the close of the Roman Era, when, in the words of the _Saxon Chronicle_, A.D. 418, the conquerors "collected all the treasures that were in Britain, and some they hid in the earth, so that no one has since been able to find them; and some they carried with them into Gaul." With this passage the authentic history of Britain ceases for a period of nearly sixty years. The Roman power being finally withdrawn, a state of society prevailed in the island, much the same as had existed at the coming of Cæsar. The British cities formed themselves into a varying number of independent states, usually at war among themselves, but occasionally united by some common danger into a confederacy under an elective chieftain. Such was Vortigern, who bears the reproach of calling in the aid of the Saxons against both his foreign and domestic foes. Recent researches have rendered it probable that the well-known names of Hengist and Horsa, ascribed to their leaders, are not proper names, but rather titles of honour, signifying war-horse and mare, bestowed on many daring leaders of bands. Meanwhile, the mighty empire of Rome, of which Britain had so long formed a part, was falling into utter ruin. The Britons made several applications to the Romans for aid: one, couched in the most abject terms, is known in history as "The Groans of the Britons;" but the succour they received had no permanent effect on the contest.

In a retrospect of the Roman Era, the conquest of Cæsar is commonly referred to as the starting point in our social progress; and it has been thus felicitously illustrated by a leading writer of our time:--"If," he says, "we compare the present situation of the people of England with that of their predecessors at the time of Cæsar's invasion; if we contrast the warm and dry cottage of the present labourer, its chimney and glass windows (luxuries not enjoyed by Cæsar himself), the linen and woollen clothing of himself and his family, the steel and glass and earthenware with which his table is furnished, the Asiatic and American ingredients of his food, and, above all, his safety from personal injury, and his calm security that to-morrow will bring with it the comforts that have been enjoyed to-day; if we contrast all these sources of enjoyment with the dark and smoky burrows of the Brigantes or the Cantii, their clothing of skins, the food confined to milk and flesh, and their constant exposure to famine and to violence, we shall be inclined to think those who are lowest in modern society richer than the chiefs of their rude predecessors. And if we consider that the same space of ground which afforded an uncertain subsistence to a hundred, or probably fewer, savages, now supports with ease more than a thousand labourers, and, perhaps, a hundred individuals beside, each consuming more commodities than the labour of a whole tribe of ancient Britons could have produced or purchased, we may at first be led to doubt whether our ancestors enjoyed the same natural advantages as ourselves; whether their sun was as warm, their soil as fertile, or their bodies as strong, as our own.