It is true that the chief cities of Britain were exempt from
oppression. They elected their own magistrates and made their own
laws. But they enjoyed this liberty because their inhabitants were
either Roman soldiers or their allies, or Romanized Britons.
Outside these cities the great mass of the native Britons were bound
to the soil and could not leave it, while a large proportion were
absolute slaves. Their work was in the brickyards, the quarries, the
mines, or in the fields or forests.
The Roman masters of these people lived in stately villas adorned with
pavements of different-colored marbles and beautifully painted walls.
These country houses, often as large as palaces, were warmed in
winter, like our modern dwellings, with currents of heated air. In
summer they opened on terraces ornamented with vases and statuary, and
on spacious gardens of fruits and flowers.[1] On the other hand, the
laborers on these great estates lived in wretched cabins plastered
with mud and thatched with straw.
[1] More than a hundred of these villas or country houses, chiefly in
the south and southwest of England, have been exhumed. Some of them
cover several acres.