166 



must have cost tears to the classical maiden, or provoked male- 

 dictions from the soldier or the slave, who were unlucky enough 

 to let them fall. But to us their associations are purely ideal, for 

 they bring down a faint echo almost from the days when our 

 fathers paid tribute to C^sae, and when the laws of Rome, and 

 the Latin language, moulded the every-day life of this Vale of 

 the Severn where we now treat of them as curiosities of the past. 



It would be easy to go into further details with regard 

 to the articles turned up by the wall at the East Gate of 

 Glotjcestee; but space will not admit of it, and I pass on to 

 the question, Why should these articles he found in this particulcur 

 part of the city ? Samian ware is very rarely, I might say never, 

 found more than a hundred feet west of the Cross ; though com- 

 mon black pottery and other Roman remains are frequently met 

 with beyond this limit. 



The fact may be clearly accounted for by a comparison of the 

 lines of our principal streets with those of a Polybian Camp. 

 In the early days of the Roman Empire the plan of the camp 

 was uniform in every time and place ; so that soldiers drafted to 

 the most distant part of the world instantly knew their quarters 

 and the post of every officer under whom they had to serve : 

 very much as under the old system in the British navy a seaman 

 removed from one ship to another, knew by his number both 

 his place and duties ; instead of, as at present, only knowing 

 how to sink the vessel in case of fog. 



The Polybian Camp for a single legion was very nearly a square 

 bisected by two principal ways through it, and arranged thus : — 



A 



