ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



But though the Romanization was thus tolerably complete, it must 

 be further qualified as a Romanization on a low scale. The more elabo- 

 rate and splendid and wealthy features of the Italian civilization, whether 

 material or intellectual or administrative, were rare or even unknown in 

 Britain. The finest objects of continental manufacture, glass and pottery 

 and gold-work and the rest, came seldom to the island, and the objects of 

 local fabric attained but seldom a high degree of merit. The choicer 

 marbles and the finer statuary are still rarer and the mosaics are usually 

 commonplace and undistinguished. Of Romano-British literature we 

 have very little and that little owes its interest to other things than 

 literary excellence. Of organized municipal or commercial or adminis- 

 trative life we have but scanty traces. The civilization of Roman 

 Britain was Roman, but it contained few elements of splendour or 

 magnificence. 



We may distinguish in this civilization two local forms deserving 

 special notice — the town and the villa. The towns of Roman Britain 

 are not few, but as we might expect they are for the most part small. 

 Many of them appear to have been originally Celtic tribal centres ; 

 then under Roman influence they developed into towns, like the tribal 

 centres in northern Gaul. Scarcely any seems to have attained any great 

 size or wealth, according to the standard of the Empire. The highest 

 form of town life known to the Roman was certainly rare in Britain : 

 the colonice and municipia, the privileged municipalities with the Roman 

 franchise and constitutions on the Italian model, were represented, so far 

 as we know, by only five examples, the colonice of Colchester, Lincoln, 

 York and Gloucester and the municipium of Verulam, and none of these 

 could vie with the great municipalities of other provinces. But while 

 lacking in size and magnificence, the towns of Roman Britain were in 

 their way real towns ; if a modern term be allowed, we might best describe 

 them as country towns. Most of them had walls, at least in the fourth 

 century. Many of them had a forum built on the Roman plan, pro- 

 viding in Roman fashion accommodation for magistrates, traders and 

 idlers. Not only the colonice and municipium which were ruled by pre- 

 scribed magistrates and town councils, but also the small places must be 

 regarded as having some form of municipal life. 



Outside these towns the country seems to have been divided up 

 into estates, known as ' villas,' and in this respect, as in its towns, Britain 

 resembles northern Gaul. The villa was the property of a great land- 

 owner, who inhabited the ' great house ' if there was one, cultivated the 

 ground close to it by slaves, and let the rest to half-serf coloni. The 

 villa in fact was the predecessor of the mediaeval manor. In Gaul some 

 of the villas were estates of eight or ten thousand acres, and the land- 

 owners' houses were splendid and sumptuous. In Britain we have no 

 evidence to determine the size of the estates, and the houses — to which 

 the term ' villa ' is often especially applied — seem rarely to have been 

 very large. A few can vie with continental residences ; many are small 

 and narrow. The landowners, as in Gaul, were doubtless the Romanized 



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