12 THE ROMAN VILLA AT HEMSWORTH. 



large proportion can represent land grants taken up by veteran 

 soldiers, most of whom, moreover, were natives of better 

 climates and would not choose to end their days in penitus toio 

 divisos orbe Britannos. Why then, in the fourth century, when 

 the general prosperity of the Empire was falling rather than 

 rising, did these large and opulent houses appear over a large 

 part of England ? They suggest some newly-found source of 

 local affluence, probably agricultural, for they were not mere 

 pleasure retreats, but the homesteads of permanent country 

 estates, in a word large farmhouses. 



From the time of Pytheas downwards many notices can be 

 found of the production of corn in Britain as considerable. 

 There is in Gibbon a well-known account of how the Emperor 

 Julian staved off a great famine in Gaul by building on the 

 Rhine 600 ships and bringing corn from Britain. The passage 

 reads as if Britain was then a recognised granary. It is possible 

 that the necessity of the constantly ravaged Continent during the 

 fourth century was the opportunity of British farmers. Most of 

 the villas stand on land good for corn-growing and near roads 

 good for transport. Many of them seem to have had large 

 outbuildings suitable for storage of grain. These have usually 

 received small attention from excavators ; closer examination 

 might tell us something of their probable use. 



