The soldiers by whom the line of the wall was defended did not belong to the legions, though legionaries had been employed in its construction. They belonged to various auxiliary corps recruited in the outlying provinces of the empire, and they were theoretically less Roman, less Italian, than their comrades enlisted in the legions, though this distinction was practically to a large extent breaking down in the second and third centuries of the empire. While Britons were being enlisted for service abroad, Asturians from Spain, Frisians and Batavians from Holland, Tungrians from Belgium, Lingones from Gaul, even Dalmatians and Dacians from the distant provinces which bore their names, were tramping from station to station along the mighty wall of Hadrian, bathing in the chilly waters of the Tyne, or hunting the deer on the misty slopes of Cross Fell. Most gladly would we learn how these detachments of soldiers, which for something like three centuries guarded the British _Limes Imperii_, were recruited; whether fresh drafts came, for instance, from Spain and from Dalmatia to replace the veterans who had earned their discharge, or whether the sons of the barracks kept the barracks full, in which case there would be probably an ever-increasing strain of British blood in the limitary garrisons. But on this point we lack definite information, which may possibly be supplied to us by the spade and the pick-axe of future excavators. The total number of actual soldiers on the line of the wall has been computed at 10,000. In addition to these there would undoubtedly be a certain number of domestic servants, grooms, camp-followers of various kinds, besides the wives and concubines of the soldiers, so that we may probably conjecture the population of the _Limes_ at not less than 20,000, a much larger number of persons than is to be found in that beautiful but solitary region to-day. Not only the numbers but the nationality of these vanished dwellers by the Tyne and Irthing strike us by their strange contrast with the present. Besides the Asturian and Dalmatian soldiers there must have been merchants and money-lenders and camp-followers of all kinds, speaking many tongues, upon these wind-swept moorlands. In the museum at South Shields is a sepulchral monument representing a woman seated, holding in her right hand a jewel-box, in her left implements of needlework. Underneath is a bilingual inscription, telling us in Latin that the figure represents “Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barate the Palmyrene, herself of the [British] nation of the Catuallauni, who died at the age of thirty”. In characters akin to Hebrew the Oriental part of the inscription says simply, “Regina, the freedwoman of Barate. Alas!” The blended nationality, the British girl bought, enfranchised, loved and too soon lost by the Syrian,--merchant perchance or usurer,--who followed the flight of the eagles of Rome, are all brought before us by these few