It is however scarcely possible that Caesar and Strabo can be strictly accurate in their reports, or that there were from the first only such towns in Britain as these authors have described. It is not consonant to experience that a thickly peopled and peaceful country[755] should long be without cities. A commercial people[756] always have some settled stations for the collection and interchange of commodities, and fixed establishments for the regulation of trade. Caesar himself tells us that the buildings of the Britons were very numerous, and that they bore a resemblance to those of the Gauls[757], whose cities were assuredly considerable. Moreover a race so conversant with the management of horses as to use armed chariots for artillery, are not likely to have been without an extensive system of roads, and where there are roads, towns will not long be wanting. Hence when, less than eighty years after the return of the Romans to Britain, and scarcely forty after the complete subjugation of the island by Agricola, Ptolemy tells us of at least fifty-six cities in existence here[758], we may reasonably conclude that they were not all due to the efforts of Roman civilization. Footnote 755: “Hominum est infinita multitudo.” Bell. Gall. v. 12. Εἶναι δὲ καὶ πολυάνθρωπον τὴν νῆσον ... βασιλεῖς τε καὶ δυνάστας πολλοὺς ἔχειν, καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον εἰρηνικῶς διακεῖσθαι. Diodor. Sicul. v. 21. Footnote 756: Οὐενέτοι ... χρώμενοι τῷ ἐμπορίῳ. Strabo, lib. iv. Footnote 757: “Creberrima aedificia, fere Gallicis consimilia.” Bell. Gall. v. 12. Footnote 758: Ptolemy at the commencement of the second century (_i. e._ about A.D. 120) mentions the following πόλεις, which surely are _towns_:— District. Towns. │ District. Towns.