Christian era, generally possessed weapons of iron, it does not follow that the people in the North had also, at so early a time, plenty of that metal. Cæsar says distinctly that, in Britain, iron was only to be found at the coasts, and that in such small quantities that the inhabitants used imported bronze, ("ære utuntur importato.") It must also be remembered, that he speaks of their using iron rings, as money. A century after Christ, the Britons seem to have got a great deal more iron, but the Germans had still so little of it, that they very rarely had swords, or large lance-heads, of that metal. It was when the Romans got colonies in Hungary, Germany, Gaul, and Britain, or about from the third century of the Christian era, that their civilization first got some influence in the northern part of Germany, and in Scandinavia, where however it evidently had a hard struggle with the old civilization.
This view is strongly supported by the antiquities and tombs in the different countries. The many Gaulish and British coins which, there is no doubt, were originally imitations of the coins of Philip, and Alexander the Great of Macedon, shew a very early Greek influence, which most likely spread itself over Gaul and Britain, from the Greek colony at Marseilles. But it is particularly important that all the antiquities which hitherto have been found in the large burying-places of the iron-period in Switzerland, Bavaria, Baden, France, England, and the North, exhibit traces more, or less, of Roman influence. The common pattern is an interlaced and arabesque ornament, (the snake ornament as it has been called above, p. 72,) which is not at all like any of the old ornaments in the bronze period, but bears a close resemblance to Roman patterns, and mosaic pavements, and many other objects of Roman art. In imitating the Roman patterns there have been added fantastic figures, and heads of animals, and men. In some of the large burying-places, as near Basle in Switzerland, the tombs were built of broken Roman tomb-stones; and in other tombs of the same period, both in Germany and Eng-
