THE ROMAN WALL BETWEEN THE FORTH AND THE CLYDE.

THE ROMAN WALL BETWEEN THE TYNE AND THE SOLWAY.

If this be

the primitive Britons had no roads. Modern antiquaries say that eight highways older than the Roman occupation can be traced, one of them running round the entire coast. so, it is probable that the Roman engineers turned the works of the conquered people to some account; and, when it was possible, made the British road a Roman street. Having trenched the soil until they came to the rocky crust below, they built upon this sure foundation three or four layers of squared or broken stones, mixed with gravel, lime, and clay"concrete," in fact; and when the causeway had reached the height of eight or ten feet, it was closely paved with large blocks of stone, especially in the middle of the track.

Most important of these military roads was that which the Saxons afterwards called Watling Street. Starting from Richborough and Dover, it crossed the Thames at London, and ran diagonally into western Wales, and thence to the Firth of Forth. The Foss Way ran from Cornwall to Lincoln; Hermin Street, from Southampton to St. David's; and Ikenild Street, from St. David's to Derby, York, and Tynemouth. These

great structures, interlaced with many cross-roads, and sending their branches out to every important station on the shore, did more to secure the province than perhaps any other work of war or of peace wrought by the Romans on our soil. Some of our best modern roads, where mail-coaches ran for many a year and heavy waggons still toil creaking on, have been made on the basis of these old Roman ways.

In the reign of Commodus (181 A.D.) the men of the northern woods burst through the Wall of Antonine, and overran the land between the two great ramparts. As if naturally formed to be a debatable ground, this district, called by the Romans Valentia, became the battle-field of the Legions and the Clans. Severus, though racked with gout, went to Britain in 208, resolved to read these audacious woodsmen of the north a terrible lesson. So long as his legions trod the pavement of the Roman roads, all was well; but when swamp and moorland, mountains thick with trees, or wastes of cold gray stone lay stretching out before his march, the real difficulty of the task before him became evident. Yet the stern valour of the old Roman never gave way. Carried in a litter, he forced his toilsome path with sword and axe through forests and across morasses until he reached the jutting point washed by the Cromarty and Moray Firths; and there a peace was made. It was a brave but very useless expedition. The clouds of Caledonian skirmishers that hung ever on the flanks of his army were but little the worse of the war; while the bones of fifty thousand Romans lay bleaching in the trackless woods (209 a.d.). Returning to Eboracum (York), Severus visited the Wall of Hadrian, and probably repaired its breaches; but he did not raise the earthen rallum, as the common story goes. Just before his death, news came of a rising in the north. The spirit of the old soldier blazed up, and he prepared to root every barbarian from the Caledonian forests. But life went out (211 A.D.); and his worthless son, Caracalla, left Britain to its fate.

211

CHAPTER VII.

THE RELAXING HOLD.

Recruits-A creeping palsy--The Picts in London-Flight of the eagles.

W

HILE contending rivals were rending in pieces the imperial purple of Rome, changes were taking place in Britain of which history gives little account. Britain was sending out her brave sons to rot on distant battle-fields, or to be estranged from their far-off home; and in return she was receiving from the Continent colonies of foreign soldiersVandals, Burgundians, and others-some of whom settled in the country, and by degrees melted into the native population. The eastern coast, also, began to be infested with piratesFranks, Norsemen, and Saxons-and its defence was intrusted to a Roman officer, entitled significantly "Count of the Saxon shore."

It would be useless here to describe the gradual palsy which enfeebled the martial grasp of Rome. Every year of the fourth century saw her hold upon Britain growing slacker and slacker. In truth, the great old empire was fast breaking up; and as life grew weak within the unwieldy frame, it retreated to make its last stand in the citadel of the heart. Corruption and civil strife within, hordes of fierce barbarians without, at last did their certain work. One symptom out of many may be taken to show how weak the Roman rule in Britain had grown. The wild woodsmen of the north, no longer Meatæ

367

and Caledonii, but transformed into Picts, with their allies the Scots from Ireland, were not content with ravaging the country between the walls, or even the districts south of Hadrian's Wall, but pushed their destructive march to London itself. Joined there by the Frankish and Saxon pirates, they plundered the city. Roman leaders trained in the British war-school, where these restless northerns allowed no swords to rust in the sheath, set up the banner of empire, one after another, until the island obtained the questionable renown of being "fertile in usurpers." Such a usurper was Maximus, who led the flower of the British youth to perish on Gallic and Italian battle-fields (387 A.D.).

The reign of Honorius saw the tie between Britain and Rome finally severed. As the Roman soldiery were 410 gradually withdrawn from the island to fight on soil nearer home, and to ward off blows levelled at the very heart of the empire, the barbarians of the north poured from their forests in fiercer and thicker swarms. After some feeble efforts to defend the southern part of the island from these raids, the hopeless task was abandoned. Letters from Honorius to the cities of Britain, written in 410, told them to provide for their own safety. The island was left to its fate. Even the troubled light of later Roman history ceased to shine upon it, and a darkness of nearly two hundred years closed around its shores.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMANIZED BRITAIN.

A Roman camp-A Roman town-Roman tombs-Home life-GamesManufactures-Roman coins-Municipal Institutions-Idol-altars.

TH

HE Roman, essentially a soldier at all times, never changed his attitude of war during his occupation of our island. No sight was more familiar to the eyes of the native Britons than that of bronzed legionaries, with their long shields, heavy javelins, and short thick swords, marching in firm array along the stone-paved roads, with the eagles glittering overhead. The camps, with which the island was quickly studded, grew into towns, built in a rectangular shape, unwalled at first, but afterwards fortified with ramparts of massive stone. Over all the face of England we can still trace the footprints of these stern invaders by the names they have left behind. Lancaster and Doncaster in the north, Dorchester and Chichester in the south, Leicester and Worcester in the middle, Colchester in the east, and Gloucester in the west, each of them owing its origin to a Roman camp (Latin, castra), show how widely the Romans had spread themselves over the country.

Lining the two main streets of a Roman town, which cut each other at right angles, buildings of various kinds might be seen. Here rose the fluted or leaf-crowned pillars of a temple to Neptune or Minerva. There were the public Baths. The Basilica, or court-house, and the Amphitheatre caught the eye