232 ROMAN VILLAS DISCOVERED IN DORSET. 



unearthed anything which could give colour to this charge ; 

 but the obscenities of Pompeii make one fear that such 

 would be the case. It is the sad experience of the Missionary 

 to-day. Civilisation is not always an unmixed blessing. 

 It never can be a blessing at all unless it is accompanied by 

 Christianity ; and our study of Roman influence on the civil 

 life of Britain would be incomplete were we to leave out 

 altogether the subject of Christian Missions. 



At the Council of Aries, 310 A.D., there were present three 

 British Bishops, York, London, and probably Lincoln, proving 

 the early introduction of Christianity. Whence did it come ? 

 Tradition speaks of S. Paul himself as having visited our 

 island. S. Joseph of Arimathea is bound up traditionally 

 with Glastonbury. The first missionaries made use of, and 

 to a large extent followed, the Roman roads ; and one of 

 these we know traversed our county from Durnovaria (Dor- 

 chester) to Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum). Traces of Christianity 

 may be rare amongst us. If we are to trust antiquarians, 

 no traces have been found amongst the innumerable Roman 

 remains extant in this county. That may be too strong a 

 statement. But the wonder is, considering the ruthless 

 character of the Saxon invasion, that any traces at all of 

 Roman civilisation are left to us ; and such emblems of 

 Christianity as might be found would be the first to suffer at 

 the hands of their heathen invaders. 



Yet even within the limits of our survey there is one relic 

 which lays claim to be Christian, and is in keeping with the 

 thought that some of our Roman colonists brought the Faith 

 of Christ to these shores. There has been found, worked 

 into the design of a tesselated pavement at Frampton, what 

 has been said to be ' the earliest known emblem of the Christian 

 Faith in Britain,' the Chi-Ro, the initial letters of the Name 

 of Christ, and this lends colour to the assertion that Christian- 

 ity existed as a new Faith in Wessex even during the life of 

 S. Paul himself. It is no disproof that this emblem was 

 associated with an inscription to Neptune, and a head of the 

 God. 



