A HISTORY OF LONDON
the provinces was marked by a second wall, between the Firths of Forth and Clyde; and no permanent conquest was ever effected beyond it by the Roman arms.
It is convenient to divide the Roman province of Britain into two parts—the outer ring of hilly country, held throughout by three or four legions, and the lowlands of the south and east that could be left to the civil arm. Verulam seems to be the only town that held the rank of municipium, and there were the 'colonies' of Colchester, Lincoln, York, and Gloucester.
The provision of a road-system was one of the first cares of the Romans in Britain; and it is to its convenient situation on the Thames that London owes its early importance as the principal centre of that system. The course of the main (military) roads in and near London is one of the problems to be solved here, but it will not be necessary to discuss at length the validity of their names. For our present purpose it will be enough to note that Watling Street started from the Kentish ports and passed through Canterbury and Rochester, crossed the Thames, and struck north-west to Wroxeter and the military district of Chester. Another road ran from the eastern counties past London and across the Thames at Staines, thence to Silchester and the west; but there is no traditional name for this road as a whole. A third came from the south coast by Chichester to London, and northwards to Lincoln and York. In Sussex this goes by the name of Stane Street, but north of Dorking it is called Ermine Street, a name that will also serve to distinguish its northerly course. These three roads had various branches and connexions, and in addition may be mentioned the Fosse Way, that did not approach London but ran from the south-west of England across the Midlands to Lincoln. The Romans may have utilized and improved pre-existing British roads; but for their own purposes covered the country with a network of excellent highways that are at the present day represented in more than one respect by the principal railway lines.
Over the civil area were scattered a number of small country towns, of which the type is seen in Silchester. Away from the towns the country was broken up into large estates belonging to Romanized British (rather than foreign) landowners, who employed slave-labour, and let such land as they could not farm themselves to ' coloni,' who were little better than serfs. From the time of Pytheas, who saw the crops in the fourth century B.C., Britain was a wheat-producing country. There was also trade in slaves, wool, and hides; and lead-mines were promptly taken over by the conquerors, though the tin of Cornwall was practically ignored. On the whole, the province could not be considered wealthy, and the remains are much inferior to those of southern Gaul and Italy. Continental luxuries were, however, imported in considerable quantity, and the table red-ware that to-day serves to hall-mark a Roman site, and came mostlv from central and southern Gaul, shows a certain degree of refinement in hfe as well as commercial intercourse.
The country houses of the large landowners belonged to two main types which need not be described here, as London cannot boast of such, and was apparently composed of a group of houses not systematically arranged, but mostly provided with gardens and orchards, and not crowded together into streets. As usual on Roman sites, baths have been discovered
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