2 ON THE ROMAN MILITARY ROAD 
in case of an attack, upon their march—the 
straight line enabled them to see as far as possi- 
ble before and behind them, lest they should be 
taken by surprise, and cut off by numbers before 
they could form into close order and set barba- 
rians at defiance. ‘They were, hence, not roads 
of communication, but roads of defence. They 
did not necessarily pass through Roman stations, 
though the Roman stations were generally in 
their vicinities, especially such as were selected 
and fortified immediately after the subjugation of 
the country. Keeping in view, then, these cha- 
racteristics, I beg leave to submit to your atten- 
tion the results of my researches after the present 
state of the remains of the Roman military road 
along Antonine’s tenth Iter throughout the county 
of Lancaster, extending them in this paper as far 
as Ribchester, and offering, as I proceed, such 
remarks thereon as I conceive either worthy of 
notice or likely to be interesting. 
Whether the line of the Roman military road 
ran directly through the station Mancunium here 
at Manchester, or passed forward in the same 
straight line as that in which it enters Lancashire, 
and proceeds hitherward through Stretford, it 
would perhaps now be next to impossible to de- 
