286 South Wilts in Romano- British Times. 



found at the mouth of the Soiiiiiie,^ the nearest English port to 

 which wouhl be on the Hampshire coast. 



Again,"-^ tliis road supplied the argentiferous copper ore for the 

 silver refinery of Silchester. Indeed, the road from Din ton to 

 Sarum was the great artery of traitic. 



" When Winchester began to affirm itself as the necessary centre of South 

 England . . . the main traffic from the western hills, and from much 

 of the sea also, from Spain, from Britanny, and from Western Normandy, 

 probably from all Southern Ireland, from the Mendips, the South of Wales, 

 and the Cornish peninsula, would be canalised through Winchester, one of 

 the points in its course." ^ 



Further, it is noticeable that this south-western district exactly 

 illustrates what Tacitus (Ac/ricola 21) mentions as part of Agricola's 

 civilizing policy in 79 — 80 A.D. in encouraging the erection of 

 " templa, fora, domos." Silchester contains all three, while " porticus 

 et baliuea," mentioned in the same chapter, are found there too.* 



It may be also that the first or second century tile found at 

 Silchester with " Conticuere omnes " rudely scratched upon it, is 

 the trace of some schoolboy's Virgil lesson given in one of the 

 schools for the sons of native chiefs which Agricola established ;^ 

 for a schoolboy has scrawled the same words on a graffito at 

 Pompeii, and added his name.'' 



Why then is it, that, in spite of the thickness of population in 

 South Wilts, planted along this great road, we find but one villa 

 between Somerset and the Hampshire border, viz., that at Bisliop- 

 strow, a few miles oft' the road ? For although we have shown 



' Haverfield, Hampshire fllctoria Hislori/), p. 270. 



" Gowlaud, in Archaologia, 57, 12'2. 



» H. Belloc, The Old Road (1904), p. 38. This book, a description of the 

 " Pilgrim's Way" from Winchester to Canterbury (the continuation of our 

 road), shows a keen eye for the lie of the country, and a brilliant power of 

 historical reconstruction. It is valuable for the early history of Hampshire. 



■* As to the "porticus et balinea" at Bath an inscription {Claxiiiul Htviiiv 

 18, 399 [1904], Haverfield, in Jthoiceum, 1904, I. 184) has been found as 

 early as 76, which may show that the baths were built in that year, before 

 Agricola's time. 



5 Tac. Agr. 21. 



* Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin, 246. 



