Early Britain—Roman BritainConybeare, John William Edward
History
Early Britain—Roman Britain
Conybeare, John William Edward
Great Britain -- History -- Roman period, 55 B.C.-449 A.D.
B. 7.--Beyond them we come to about as many more names in our ancient
catalogues of which all we can say is that we know the district to
which they belong, and may safely apply them to one or other of the
existing Roman sites in that district; the particular application
being disputed with all the heat of the _odium archaeologicum_. Thus
_Bremetonacum_ was certainly in Lancashire; but whether it is
now Lancaster, or Overborough, or Ribchester, we will not say;
_Caesaromagum_ was certainly in Essex; but was it Burghstead, Widford,
or Chelmsford? And was the original _Camalodunum_ at Colchester,
Lexden, or Maldon?
B. 8.--And, yet further, we find, especially in the Ravenna list,
multitudes of names with nothing whatever to tell us of their
whereabouts; though nearly all have been seized upon by rival
antiquaries, and ascribed to this, that, and the other of the endless
Roman sites which meet us all over the country.[207]
B. 9.--For it must be remembered that there are very few old towns in
England where Roman remains have not been found, often in profusion;
and even amongst the villages such finds are exceedingly common
wherever excavations on any large scale have been undertaken. Thus
in the Cam valley, where the "coprolite" digging[208] resulted in
the systematic turning over of a considerable area, their number
is astounding, proving the existence of a teeming population. Many
thousands of coins were turned up, scarcely ever in hordes, but
scattered singly all over the land, testifying to the amount of petty
traffic which must have gone on generation after generation. For these
coins are very rarely of gold or silver, and amongst them are found
the issues of every Roman Emperor from Augustus to Valentinian III.
And, besides the coins, the soil was found to teem with fragments of
Roman pottery; while the many "ashpits" discovered--as many as thirty
in a single not very large field--have furnished other articles of
domestic use, such as thimbles.[209] Even horseshoes have been found,
though their use only came in with the 5th century of our era.[210]
B. 10.--Now there is no reason for supposing that the Cam valley was
in any way an exceptionally prosperous or populous district in the
Roman period. It contained but one Roman town of even third-class
importance, Cambridge, and very few of the "villas" in which the
great landed proprietors resided. The wealth of remains which it has
furnished is merely a by-product of the "coprolite" digging, and it
is probable that equally systematic digging would have like results in
almost any alluvial district in the island. We may therefore regard
it as fairly established that these districts were as thickly peopled
under the Romans as at any other period of history, and that the
agricultural population of our island has never been larger than in
the 3rd and 4th centuries, till its great development in the 19th.
SECTION C.
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