Peace hardly set in till the opening of the third century. It was then, I think, that country-houses and farms first became common in all parts of the civilized area. The statistics of datable objects discovered in these buildings seem conclusive on this point. Except in Kent and the south-eastern region generally, not only coins, but also pottery of the first century are infrequent, and many sites have yielded nothing earlier than about A.D. 250. Despite the ill name that attaches to the third and fourth centuries, they were perhaps for Britain, as for parts of Gaul,[1] a period of progressive prosperity. Certainly, the number of British country-houses and farms inhabited during the years A.D. 280-350 must have been very large. Prosperity culminated, perhaps, in the Constantinian Age. Then, as Eumenius tells us, skilled artisans abounded in Britain far more than in Gaul, and were fetched from the island to build public and private edifices as far south as Autun.[2] Then also, and, indeed, as late as 360, British corn was largely exported to the Rhine Valley,[3] and British cloth earned a notice in the eastern Edict of Diocletian.[4] The province at that time was a prosperous and civilized region, where Latin speech and culture might be expected to prevail widely. [Footnote 1: Mommsen, _Röm. Gesch._, v. 97, 106, and Ausonius, _passim_.] [Footnote 2: Eumenius, _Paneg. Constantio Caesari_, 21 _civitas Aeduorum ... plurimos quibus illae provinciae_ (Britain) _redundabant accepit artifices, et nunc exstructione veterum domorum et refectione operum publicorum et templorum instauratione consurgit_.] [Footnote 3: Ammianus, xviii. 2,3, _annona a Brittaniis sueta transferri_; Zosimus, iii. 5.] [Footnote 4: Edict. Diocl. xix. 36. Compare Eumenius, _Paneg. Constantino Aug.,_ 9 _pecorum innumerabilis multitudo ... onusta velleribus_, and _Constantio Caesari_, 11 _tanto laeta munere pastionum_. Traces of dyeing works have been discovered at Silchester (_Archaeologia_, liv. 460, &c.) and of fulling in rural dwellings at Chedworth in Gloucestershire, Darenth in Kent, and Titsey in Surrey (Fox, _Archaeologia_, lix. 207).]