In the middle of a Roman fortress was the Praetorium or general's quarters. Traces of such a building are to be seen in the camp at Melandra, and at Chester the foundations of a large edifice discovered in Northgate Street may possibly be a portion of a similar building. Inscriptions show us that another legion, called the Legio Secunda, was stationed at Chester for several years. When Britain was more or less pacified and required fewer troops this legion was recalled and sent to the Roman provinces on the Danube. Tacitus tells us that Agricola spread civilization among the Britons, sent the sons of chieftains to Rome to be educated, and even in time taught the Britons to adopt Roman habits and dress and to speak the Latin tongue. But he would not at first let them join the Roman legions in Britain; those who wished to fight for the Roman emperors were sent abroad to the Roman provinces on the Rhine or the Danube. The soldiers of subject races were not for many years after their conquest allowed by the Romans to fight in their own country. The tombstones mentioned in the previous chapter prove this, for not one of them bears the name of any British soldier. A bronze tablet dug up at Malpas, on which is engraved a decree of the Emperor Trajan, shows that the soldiers who fought in the Roman army in Britain were not all Romans, or even Italians, for it speaks of Thracians, Dalmatians, Spaniards, and men of other nations conquered by Rome. For seven years Agricola was a wise and a humane ruler. He removed many of the burdens put upon the Britons by previous governors, and it was chiefly due to him that the Romans were able to make their rule acceptable to the Britons. In time Britons became proud of the name of Roman citizens. We have seen from the character of the remains that Chester was peculiarly a military city. Thus it differed greatly from many of the Roman cities of southern Britain, which lost their military character as the tide of war rolled northwards and westwards. These cities soon became busy centres of trade and civic life, with all the conveniences and luxuries of Italian towns. They had their temples and their basilica or town hall, theatres and public baths, palaces and colonnades of shops, and handsome villas of Roman officials. But life at Chester, with the continual arrival and departure of troops and stores, must have been hard and monotonous, with the din of warfare probably never far distant. The Welsh were never really subdued by the Romans. Yet even at Chester there were buildings of importance, as we can see from the broken fragments of pillars in the little garden by the Water Tower, and in the basements of Vernon's Toy Bazaar and other shops in Chester.