Archæological information obtained of late years shows that at the time
of the Roman invasion, there was a larger amount of civilization in
Ancient Britain than had been generally supposed: that in addition to
the knowledge of the old inhabitants in agriculture, in the training and
rearing of horses, cows, and other domestic animals, they were able to
work in mines, had skill in the construction of war-chariots and other
carriages, and in the manufacture of metals; and there is evidence that
British manufactures and materials were exported to certain parts of the
Continent, probably in British vessels. The ancient coinage of this
period is also well worthy of attention.
In connexion with the Ancient British period, it would seem that
probably 2,000 years before the Roman times there had been in Great
Britain a certain degree of civilization, which from various causes
declined in extent. If Stonehenge may be considered as of the same
antiquity as similar remains in various parts of the East--which are
reckoned by good authorities to be 4,000 years old--we had in this
country a degree of civilization which was contemporary with the
prosperous period of the Egyptian empire; and, in times more immediately
preceding the Roman occupation, we know that Britain was the grand
source of Druidical illumination (whatever relation that may have had to
a true civilization) to the whole of Continental Europe.
That the Ancient Britons, even after they were conquered by the Romans,
had still a strength considered dangerous, is shown by the fact that
upwards of forty barbarian legions which had followed the Roman
standards were settled chiefly upon the northern and eastern coasts; and
it is shown that a force of about 19,200 Roman foot and 1,700 horse was
required to secure peace, and the carrying out of certain laws in the
island.
The encampments, Roman and British, are thus described. In the Roman
camp, the plan is invariably the same--a rectangular area, surrounded by
a ditch, the earth thrown inwards, forming a high mound, defended on the
top with wooden palisades, but of these all vestiges have disappeared:
in the middle of each side the entrance, from which a way led to the
opposite gate; and at or near the outer action of the two ways, was the
Prætorium, the remains of which may frequently be traced. These camps
are not usually found on very high hills. The Britons, on the other
hand, always occupied the highest ground, frequently an isolated hill,
which they surrounded with deep trenches and a series of low terraces
scooped out of the side of the hill, rising one above another, not in an
unbroken line, but forming, in some places, a network of flat forms,
commanding every approach to the entrances, with advantageous positions
for the sling, in the use of which the Britons peculiarly excelled.
Every inequality of the ground was taken advantage of: the entrances
sometimes opened into one of the trenches, through which the approach to
the interior leads, so as to expose an enemy to an overwhelming storm of
darts and stones from the heights above.
Our early historians mention four great roads by which South Britain was
traversed, and these usually have been considered as the work of its
conquerors; but recent researches have led to the conclusion that the
Romans only kept in repair, and perhaps improved, the roads which they
found in use on their settlement in the island. Along the course of the
great roads, or in their immediate vicinity, are found the principal
cities, which, in pursuance of their usual policy, the Romans either
founded or re-edified; and to which, according to the privilege
bestowed, the various names were given of colonies, municipalities,
stipendiary, and Latian cities. Many other Roman roads exist.
"The old British roads, or trackways, were not paved or gravelled, but
had a basis of turf, and wound along the tops or sides of the chains of
hills which lay in their way. Surrey furnishes a remarkable example of
such an appropriation of one of its chalk ridges; and it may be inferred
that the agger called the Hog's Back presented to the earliest
inhabitants of Britain a natural causeway of solid chalk, covered with a
soft verdant turf, peculiarly suited to the traffic of the British
chariots, and connecting the western Belgæ with the Cantii, and
affording through them an access towards the continent at all seasons of
the year. These advantageous peculiarities, no doubt, rendered it the
grand strategic route by which an invading army would have penetrated to
the westward; and Vespasian may be supposed, with great reason, to have
marched along it."[7]
To return to the Roman Roads. Although inferior to the Britons of the
nineteenth century in the art of spending money, if judged by the
present state of science, the Roman road-makers could not be despicable
engineers: their levels were chosen on different principles, but their
lines of roads passed through the same counties, and generally in the
same direction as our railways. A diagram in the _Quarterly Review_,
exhibiting a general view of the direction of the principal Roman roads
in England, shows that, on comparing one or two of our principal lines,
we shall find, that the Great Western supplies the place, with a little
deviation near Reading, of the Roman _iter_ from London to Bath and
Bristol; the Liverpool and Manchester, and on to Leeds and York,
replaces the northern Watling-street; the Great Eastern follows a Roman
way, and so of the rest.[8]
Professor Phillips has thus strikingly illustrated this comparison to be
made in the North of England. "As now two railways, so a little earlier
two mail-roads, and far earlier two British tracks, conducted the
traveller from South Britain through the sterner country of the North.
This is the inevitable result of the great anticlinal ridge of
stratified rocks--our Pennine Alps--thrown up from Derbyshire to the
Scottish Border. This is the 'heaven water' boundary of the river
drainages: on the west of it ran the line of road northward from
Mancunium; on the east of it the line from Eburacum; the former nearly
in the course of the North-eastern, the latter not lately deviating from
the North-eastern rail. Along these routes Agricola divided his troops:
these were the routes followed alike by the Pict and Scot, Plantagenet
and Tudor, Cavalier and Roundhead. Wade lay on the east of these
mountains, while the Stuart overran their western slopes: and Rupert
swept up the western tract to surprise the besiegers of York."[9] On the
whole it appears that the lines of the earlier British roads were
indicated by the great features of nature; and that, for the most part,
the Roman ways followed and straightened the old tracks.
"It is equally remarkable and significant that the Roman municipia and
coloniæ became the centres of Saxon and Anglican strength; and if in
this day of the steam-engine their relative importance is less
conspicuous, it is still a matter of English history. From the top of
the Brigantian mountain we may reanimate the busy world which has long
passed away from life: the jealous boundaries of propriety disappear;
the chimneys vanish; the thundering hammer is silent. From the midst of
boundless forests of oak and pine, rise many peaks or bare summits of
heaths crowned with monumental stones or burial mounds. The rivers
gliding through the deepest shade, bear at intervals the light wicker
boat, still frequent in Dyfed, loaded with fish, or game, or fruit. On
dry banks above are the conical huts of the rude hunters, and near them
the not narrower houses of the dead,--perhaps not far off the cave of
the wolf. Lower down the dale, the richest of pastures is covered with
the fairest of cattle and the most active of horses. Still lower, the
storehouse of the tribe, the water station to which large canoes,
hollowed from the mighty oaks of Hatfield Chase, have brought from the
Humber the highly-prized beads and amulets, perhaps the precious bronze
which is to replace the arrow, spear, and axe of stone.
"Both north and south of the Humber very different scenes appear on the
high and open Wold: within the memory of man, many parts of these wild
regions were untouched by plough, traversed by bustard, and covered with
innumerable flocks. The more we reflect on the remains which crowd this
region--the numerous tracks, the countless tumuli, the frequent
dykes--the clearer grows the resemblance between the Yorkshire Wolds
and the Downs of Wilts and Dorset. On opening the tumuli we discover
similar ornaments, and from whatever cause, consanguinity of race, or
analogy of employments and way of life, the earliest people must be
allowed to have been very much the same along the dry chalk hills from
the vicinity of Bridlington to the country of Dorchester. This is the
region of the tumuli: on its surface are not unfrequent foundations of
the British huts."
The main population did not reside on these hills, since they are for
miles naturally dry. But, from below their edge rise innumerable bright
streams, by which, "no doubt, were the settled habitations, the Cyttian
of the early Britons, followed by the Saxon _tun_ and the Danish _by_;
on the hills above were long boundary fences, and within these the raths
and tumuli, the monumental stones and idols. In situations where nature
gave peculiar advantages, one of the grand manufactures of the tribes
was established. The fabrication of pottery, from the Kimmeridge clay
about Malton, was undoubtedly very extensive in British days, and
characteristic both as to substance and fashion; that of bricks and
tiles at York was equally considerable in Roman days, and it is curious
to walk now into the large brick-yards and potteries which are
successfully conducted at these same places, on the very sites which
furnished the funeral urn, and the perforated tube which distributed air
from the hypocaust."
We may acquire some idea of Roman road-making from the following
details:--"From the wall of Antoninus to Rome, and from thence to
Jerusalem, that is, from the north-west to the south-east point of the
empire, was measured a distance of 3,740 English miles; of this
distance 85 miles only were sea-passages, the rest was the _road of
polished silex_. Posts were established along these lines of high road,
so that 100 miles a day might be with ease accomplished. A fact related
by Pliny affords an example of the quickest travelling in a carriage in
ancient times. Tiberius Nero, with three carriages, accomplished a
journey of 200 miles in twenty-four hours, when he went to see his
brother Drusus, who was sick in Germany." (_Burgess._)
The towns, and forts, and roads are, however, very far from being the
only traces of Roman occupation that remain in our country. Camps,
occupying well-chosen positions, occur in numbers, which testify the
difficulty with which the subjugation of the island was accomplished;
while the remains of stately buildings, with ornamented baths, mosaic
pavements, fresco paintings and statuary, and articles of personal
ornament, which are discovered almost every time that the earth is
uncovered to any considerable depth, prove the eventual wide diffusion
of the elegant and luxurious mode of life which it was the aim of the
conquerors to introduce. Roman glass and pottery, in great variety, and
frequently of the most elegant shape, abound; but the most valuable are
the sepulchral urns, which betoken the neighbourhood of towns, of which
perhaps no other traces now remain.
At Aldborough, in Yorkshire (the Roman Isurium), and in some of the
small towns on the line of Hadrian's wall, in Northumberland, masses of
the small houses have been uncovered, and their appearance leads us to
believe that the houses of a Roman town in Britain were grouped thickly
together; that they were mostly separated by narrow alleys, and that
there were in general few streets of any magnitude; most ancient towns,
even in the present day, abound with alleys.
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.
"But let us substitute distance of space for distance of time; and,
instead of comparing situations of the same country at different
periods, compare different countries at the same period, and we shall
find a still more striking discrepancy. The inhabitant of South America
enjoys a soil and a climate, not superior merely to our own, but
combining all the advantages of every climate and soil possessed by the
remainder of the world. His valleys have all the exuberance of the
tropics, and his mountain-plains unite the temperature of Europe to a
fertility of which Europe offers no example. Nature collects for him,
within the space of a morning's walk, the fruits and vegetables which
she has elsewhere separated by thousands of miles. She has given him
inexhaustible forests, has covered his plains with wild cattle and
horses, filled his mountains with mineral treasures, and intersected all
the eastern face of his country with rivers, to which our Rhine and
Danube are merely brooks. But the possessor of these riches is poor and
miserable. With all the materials of clothing offered to him almost
spontaneously, he is ill-clad; with the most productive of soils, he is
ill-fed; though we are told that the labour of a week will there
procure subsistence for a year, famines are of frequent occurrence; the
hut of the Indian, and the residence of the landed proprietor, are alike
destitute of furniture and convenience; and South America, helpless and
indigent with all her natural advantages, seems to rely for support and
improvement on a very small portion of the surplus wealth of
England."[14]
At length, the connexion between Britain and Rome was entirely severed.
The Saxons joined the Picts and the Scots in their great invasion, and
continuing their predatory warfare reduced the country to the greatest
misery. Any degree of union amongst the Britons might have enabled them
to repel their enemies; the walls of the principal cities, fortified by
the Romans, were yet strong and firm. The tactics of the legions were
not forgotten. Bright armour was piled in the storehouses, and the
serried line of spears might have been presented to the half-naked Scots
and Picts, who could never have prevailed against their opponents. But
the Britons had no inclination to use the sword, except against each
other.