of Tillbridge Lane points direct to Littleborough on the Notts bank of the Trent. Here a camp would be formed, which developed later into the walled station Segelocum; here also was a ford which could soon be made available for the passage of an army. The banks were sloped away so as to make the descent easy to a raised causeway—paved with stones and held up by strong stakes driven into the bed of the river. This causeway, which was 18 feet wide, existed till 1820, when, owing to the obstruction it caused to navigation in dry seasons, it had to be removed; but part of the paved descent can still be seen on the farther bank. The reason why the road from Lincoln to this ford was not more direct is that it avoided the low land, then subject, as will be shown, to constant flooding from the Trent. It was perhaps not till the governorship of Agricola (A.D. 78-85), when the country between the Humber and the Tyne was completely subdued, that Lindum became an important fortress. In his _Life of Agricola_ Tacitus names a provokingly small number of places in Britain; but he states that that general, in the second year of his command, “erected garrisons and fortresses among those tribes which had hitherto considered themselves a match for Rome.”[12] His, therefore, may have been the vigilant eye, which first discerned the strategic value of Lindum; but possibly it was Hadrian, or one of his commanders, who elevated it to the rank of a “colony.” This term was applied under the Empire to a settlement of veterans, which was held to form an integral part of Rome, and whose government was a copy in miniature of that of the capital. Each colony had its senate or “curia,” and annually elected two “duumviri,” corresponding to the consuls. A portion of the neighbouring land was assigned to each soldier, and the men were sometimes allowed, for a time at least, to retain their arms. If we may trust the “Ravenna” list of towns, the only “coloniæ” in Britain were Colchester, Lincoln, and Gloucester, and this was perhaps the order of their foundation. These colonies formed in themselves so strong a nucleus of Roman civilisation that they were seldom or never made garrison towns. The three headquarters of the legions—York, Chester, and Caerleon—were not colonies;[13] and there is no trace of a colony among the military stations on Hadrian’s Wall. The small number of these towns in Britain, and their intimate connection with Rome, indicate the great importance of Lindum. Another proof of this is the fact that the Foss Way, which, at least in part, is a work of the second century, seems to have been constructed with the express object of creating easy communication between Lincoln and the thickly-settled district of the south-west. No other town, except London, York, Colchester, and perhaps Cirencester, was connected with so many highways of the first class.