189 



the ninth legion, or some part of it, must have taken part in the 

 first Cotteswold campaign, though it was afterwards stationed 

 at Camalodunum, where it was nearly destroyed by Boabicea. 

 In Tacitus' History (iii, 22) we find vexillations (bodies of 

 1000 men) from each of the " three British legions, the ninth, 

 second, and twentieth," taking part in the war between Vitellius 

 and Vespasian, in Italy. This was in the year 69. 



Last summer I measured the width of a piece of the Via Julia 

 I found in the Forest of Dean. It averages eight Eoman feet. 

 The paved road up to the temple on the Alban Mount at Eome 

 — the central point of veneration to all the Latin tribes — was 

 of the same width. This military road connected Gloucester 

 with the Colony at Caerleon, and was certainly made when the 

 Second Legion was moved onward to those dangerous quarters 

 in the heart of the country of the Silures : that is to say, under 

 Julius Frontinus, in the reign of Yespasian.* These are positive 



* Tacitus {Life of Agricola, xvii.) says of Feontixus : " He was a man 

 truly great, and sure to signalize himself wlienever a fair opportunity 

 called forth his abilities. He reduced to subjection the powerful and warlike 

 state of the Siluees, and though in that expedition he had to cope with a 

 fierce and obstinate enemy, but with the difficulties of a country almost 

 impracticable, it was his glory that he surmounted every obstacle." 



Julius Fkontinus was an able lawyer, as well as a man of remarkable 

 uprightness. He desired at his death that no monument should be 

 raised to his memory, which he said would be sufficiently known by his 

 works if they should be found to deserve praise. He wrote a treatise on 

 the aqueducts of Eome, wliich is still extant. Of his skill as an engineer 

 the reader may form a better idea than from any book, if he will go over 

 the line selected for the road I have spoken of, in the Forest of Dean. 

 Tacitus might have included this in his description of the countrj' as 

 " almost impracticable ; " yet with wonderful skill the road is carried over 

 the easiest gradients in the Forest ; especially the part ninning. along the 

 most beautiful glade between Soudley and Blackpool Bridge. I am sorry 

 to leara from a landed proprietor in the Forest that many tons of the 

 paving-stones of the Roman Causeway have been removed to build the 

 fences of recent enclosures. Is it too much to hope that the Government 

 Commissioners will take steps to preserve the one perfect piece of the paving 

 at Blackpool Bridge ? There is scarcely a spot in the whole of Great 

 Britain of greater interest, although it is so little knoAvn I 



