This examination of the few broken remnants of monuments that have been accidentally preserved, which obviously represent but a small percentage of those once existing in the cemeteries of Londinium, brings out a new criterion for an estimate of the dignity and opulence of the Roman city. To this evidence we may add the extent of the walls and the importance of the port, and the fact that the city was the key of the road system of the country. It was probably a seat of the Governor; in the Constantinian age it became a bishopric and a mint town. Then we have the quantity and costly nature of the imports which are known to us from objects in our museums—an immense quantity of Samian pottery, decorated glassware, silver, fine bronzes, etc. We also see how closely the monuments of London resembled those of Trèves, the later capital of Western Europe. Altogether I get the impression that Londinium must have been one of the most important commercial cities in the West. In the rote education of our schools, the great facts of our history are too much buried under an avalanche of minor details, and mere dates and names. If we can get a story written about Roman London, one scene must be set among the Tombs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ +CHAPTER VI+ SCULPTURE “Fantastic and even grotesque, it possesses a wholly unclassical fierceness and vigour, and not a few observers have remarked that it recalls not the Roman world, but the Middle Ages.” —HAVERFIELD on the Corbridge lion. IMPERIAL STATUES [Illustration: FIG. 72. ]