Londinium (_London_) to Pontes (_Staines_), mille passuum (_miles_) xxii Pontes to Calleva Attrebatum (_Silchester_) xxii Calleva to Venta Belgarum xxii Venta to Clausentum (_Southampton_) x Clausentum to Portus Magnus (_Portchester_) x The Roman routes are not comfortable to follow now, particularly to the cyclist; their course is invariably straight, leading direct from point to point, over hill and valley alike, without regard to gradient or the lie of the land. The appeal they make to the thoughtful imagination is distinct and striking. Direct and uncompromising, they follow their course regardless of obstacles, suggesting irresistibly the genius and energy of the imperious people who met difficulties only to subdue them. Primarily imperial in character, if not always military, few things conduced so much to the settlement and growth in civilization of the land. Commerce followed in the wake of security, and the arts of war ministered thus as handmaid to those of peace. CHAPTER IV SAXON WINCHESTER Post tenebras, lux The Roman occupation lasted some 400 years, after which Winchester history becomes a blank, and it is not the settlement and conquest of the next occupiers, the Gewissas or West Sexe, but their conversion to Christianity which begins to dispel the historical just as it did the spiritual darkness of the period. Of these years, could we but trust the romantic pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who has preserved for us the legendary stories of the period as preserved in the early Welsh tradition which he followed out, we might have a complete and circumstantial history, telling us of Arthur and his Knights, of Merlin, and Uther Pendragon, all focussed round our own Hampshire country, with Winchester and Silchester as the chief centres of action. Thus arose the mediaeval tradition connecting Winchester with Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table--a tradition consolidated by the presence in the great Hall of Winchester of the curious relic which popular imagination has for hundreds of years identified with the actual Round Table round which that famous brotherhood feasted. But of this more anon. And attractive as are the speculations into which Geoffrey of Monmouth might lead us, we must put him sternly by till some greater hand has winnowed the grain--for some grain his record undoubtedly possesses--from the chaff of credulity, if not of deliberate invention.