More important still are the Roman roads which led from Winchester, the routes of which are still unmistakable, and which remain the great enduring monument both of the Roman occupation and of the Roman civilizing instinct. Indeed, the chief service the Roman occupation did for Winchester was to bring it into effective contact with the rest of the country. The Belgic tribesmen had no common organization or polity; a number of scattered and incoherent units linked together merely by the accident of position, and a more or less common racial descent, they resembled one of the lower animal forms, not possessing a common nerve centre, but controlled by local ganglia and responding merely to local stimuli. The Roman genius was to link up the whole land into one united organism and to supply a nervous and arterial system regulated by central control. Law and Order were the great lessons it taught the world, and open and secure lines of communication were the necessary preliminary of the _Pax Romana_. No succeeding age save our own has so fully recognized the value of good and effective road communication. Our modern roads and tracks very often merely follow routes first marked out by Roman hands, and the common occurrence of the title ‘High Street,’ generally applied to the leading thoroughfare of town or village, is a constant reminder to us of the debt we owe to the Romans. Radiating from Venta Belgarum were no less than five thoroughfares, of which four were undoubtedly important arteries. The first led to the sea, to Clausentum, the port. It followed the line of the existing Southampton road as far as Otterbourne, and then straight on through Stoneham (the _ad Lapidem_ of Bede) to Clausentum. This road passed straight through the city from south to north, and from the northern gate of the city it branched off into two, one going north-east, along the existing Basingstoke road to Silchester (_Calleva Attrebatum_), the other north-west, following the line of the existing Andover road to Cirencester (_Durocornovium_). Both these roads can be still traced for a distance of a good many miles from Winchester. The fourth led directly west to Sarum, and can still be followed as a well-defined track all the way. The fifth led to Portchester (_Portus Magnus_) over Deacon Hill, and through Morestead, but with the exception of the first few miles all trace of it is now lost. Details of some of these roads as given in the Antonine Itinerary already mentioned are quoted below, and the names of the stations and their distances apart are of more than usual interest, particularly from the assistance they give us as regards identification of the Roman sites.