A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



administrative, not racial. Those who left Britain and those who stayed 

 equally regarded themselves as ' Romani,' and indeed it is not probable 

 that many did in reality depart. The fact is that the gap between the 

 Briton and the Roman, visible enough in the first century, had almost 

 become obliterated by the fourth century. The townspeople and 

 educated persons in Britain seem to have employed Latin, as casual 

 words scratched on tiles or pottery assist to prove, while on the side of 

 material civilization the Roman element reigned supreme. Before the 

 Claudian conquest there had existed in the island a Late Celtic art of 

 considerable merit, best known for metal-work and earthenware and 

 distinguished by its fantastic use of plant and animal forms, its predilec- 

 tion for the ' returning spiral ' ornament, and its enamelling. This art 

 vanished. In a few places, as for instance in some potteries of the New 



m 



Fig. I. New Forest Ware with Leaf Patterns of Native Tvpe. 



Forest (fig. i) and of the Nene Valley (sec. 5), its products survived as 

 local manufactures, but even these were modified by Roman influences. 

 In general it met the fate which overtakes every picturesque but semi- 

 civilized art when confronted with an organized coherent culture. 

 Almost every important feature in Romano-British life was Roman. 

 The ground plans of the private houses form an exception ; they indi- 

 cate in all probability that the Romans, coming to our shores from 

 sunnier lands, accepted, as we might expect, some features of the native 

 types of dwellings. But the furniture of these houses is Roman. The 

 mosaic pavements and painted stucco and carved stone-work which 

 adorned them, the hypocausts which warmed them and the bathrooms 

 which increased their comfort were all equally borrowed from Italy. 

 The better objects of domestic use tell the same tale. For example, the 

 commonest good pottery is the red ware called Samian or Terra Sigillata. 

 This was copied from an Italian original and manufactured in Gaul, and 

 it completely superseded native manufactures as the fashionable and 

 indeed universal material. Nor were these foreign elements confined to 

 the mansions of the wealthy. Samian bowls and rudely coloured plaster 

 and makeshift hypocausts have been found even in outlying hamlets, 



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